


A Thingy for a Hand, a Hook Thing Where His Hand Should Be

by easyforpauline



Series: an early name used for videophones [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Arts & Crafts, Banter, Consumption of Raw Potato, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dirty Talk, Dissociation, Dom/sub, Domestic, Ear Piercings, Established Relationship, Face Slapping, Fluff, Hair-pulling, Humiliation, Impact Play, Insults, M/M, Manhandling, Nicknames, Painplay, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Semi-disregard for safe piercing conditions due to super serum, Sharing a Bed, Stone Top, The Briefest of Blow Jobs, not sharing a bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 04:16:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15987440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easyforpauline/pseuds/easyforpauline
Summary: The Barnes-Rogers household believes in reducing, reusing, and recycling. If Steve and Bucky had a minivan and no concerns about privacy and public indecency, they'd proudly display a bumper sticker declaring, "Save the planet, fuck a supersoldier."As it is, they have to find subtler ways of expressing themselves.





	A Thingy for a Hand, a Hook Thing Where His Hand Should Be

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. About the "PTSD" and "dissociation" tags: This IS overall a fluffy and light fic but Bucky also still has some serious mental health issues and those are dealt with more heavily/directly in one scene in this than they are in most of the series. Elaboration in end notes.
> 
> 2\. Taking this opportunity to draw your attention to the fact that THREE different beautiful pieces of fan art now exist for this series, [Still Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12509224) and [Never Gonna Run Out of Date Night Activities](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12351714) by Quietnight, and [Bucky in his purple makeup job](https://silentwalrus1.tumblr.com/post/159878157848/so-i-decided-to-draw-a-scene-from-how-do-they-get) by Silentwalrus. My cup runneth over; I am so so blessed; look!!! At all of these!!!!
> 
> 3\. Did you receive email notifications that this story was being slowly posted in chaptered form and then that chaptered story disappeared and got replaced with this? Funny story: Turns out I don't know what I'm doing or how to properly manipulate html or what a computer is. That's what happened there.

The Ultra Purifying Champagne Bubble Orange Mud Wonder Face Mask’s starting to fizz, looking in the magnifying makeup mirror like a pumice stone some cackling mad scientist’s attempting to gift with sentience and limbs, when Steve knocks loudly on the door and yells, “Ike! Hey, Ike!"

Obviously Bucky’s used to answering to plenty of dumb names for their mutual entertainment. They both are. But seeing as “Ike” is brand new, without context, and not very entertaining so far, he feels he’s got some leeway to ignore the out-of-tune bullhorn trying to disturb today’s stupidly expensive experiment in _acknowledge ownership of body_.

More knocking. The dumb name muffled the implicit order in that, but stripped to nothing but knuckles rapping wood, it tugs on the part of him that’s magnetized to Steve’s desire. A low, “Hey, open up,” and that’s an explicit order, an extra-strength magnet. The added, “If you want to,” makes it doubly so.

Adjusting the towel around his hips so it’s less secure, Bucky opens up. Head and shoulders shove out the cracked-ajar door, and Steve jumps back a bit to make room for him, but hardly. At the same time as Bucky’s saying, “No one here named Ike,” Steve’s mouth springs open, his eyes narrow with delight, and his finger comes up to poke at Bucky’s bubbly science experiment cheek.

Bucky both flinches backward and swats Steve away; Steve redirects to circle the wrist of the offending hand in a warning grip. Raises his eyebrow. “You got a good reason for stopping me from touching you how I like?”

“Yeah. This bubble mud thing cost about seventeen dollars. Wait a bit, please. And then you can poke me in the face to your heart’s content.”

“Hmm. I guess that’s a good enough reason.” His grip around Bucky’s wrist tightens, and a quilted and cotton-stuffed facsimile of an anchor plunks into the waters of Bucky’s brain. It sinks past his eyes, through his chest, settling into his stomach. Gravity pins him more solidly now. He pushes his arm against Steve’s palm not so hard as to be rude, but hard enough to say, _Hey_ _there, stud. What’s the good news?_

“Yeah?” he says. “You’ll decree it permissible?”

“Hard call, but you won me over.” As Steve shuffles closer, Bucky knocks the door open wide so they’ve got room to maneuver. He’s still standing kind of weirdly ducked, leftover from poking his head out the door like a turtle out of its shell, and when Steve murmurs, “Any good reason I can’t touch your hair?” he answers by ducking further and weirder, presenting Steve with the top of his head.

That gets him a soft laugh and a kiss to where the wet’s hair’s pulled back sleek and tight above his ear instead of all that newly exposed square acreage of scalp—even Steve's affection is contrary—followed by a bite to his earlobe.

Bucky hisses at the sharp heat and rises up on the balls of his feet, making his earlobe pull taut in that toothy grip, and a choked whine comes from his throat. Shaky with Steve’s laughter, the bite tightens, and it’s like thoughtlessly touching a hot pan with the wrong hand, but with all his instincts to leap back surgically removed. It’s so easy for Steve to turn him into something stupider than a wild animal peeled down to its nervous system. A wild animal with a death wish that won’t get answered, only 'cause a smarter animal’s keeping it as a pet.

“Fuck,” Bucky says, “I love you, ah, fucking, you ah, fuck, _piranha_.” And he remembers, the thing he often remembers but never remembers to bring up, “Oh, hey, um, you haven’t, uh—”

No more teeth. Steve’s tongue pokes at his ear, which is already returning to painlessness, though it flares alive for another moment when Steve sucks, calling back some of the blood.

Sometimes Bucky thinks he should put up street signs in his circulatory system, hammer them securely into his arteries, with all the chaotic redirecting the two of them insist on subjecting his red cells and plasma and yada yada yada to on a regular basis. Might make his insides less confused.

But what’s the fun in that?

Steve uses Bucky’s ponytail as a handle to right his head, so they can stand closer to normal-postured. They smile goofily at each other. The mask turns Bucky’s skin tight; the bubbling’s dying down as it dries, and smiling becomes an act of straining awkwardly against bindings.

There's still a voice in his head belonging to a normal and sensible human who'd just hit five feet tall and learned to throw a proper curve ball when the stock market took its dramatic nosedive. That voice is all that keeps him anything resembling frugal.

Otherwise, he'd be wandering off immediately to spend thousands of dollars stockpiling Ultra Purifying Champagne Bubble Orange Mud Wonder Face Masks for a long and happy future of Steve forcing him to pull exaggerated faces while spidery cracks form in his ugly crepe-thin exoskeleton.

Maybe not wandering off immediately. Hypothetical, less frugal him would wander off tomorrow, freshly set free from the nine-to-five. Right now and right here, he’s got stuff to take care of.

Steve says, “I haven’t what?”

“What? Oh. Haven’t ever fucked a chupacabra, have you? No, I was—Youhaven’tpiercedmyears.” He averts his eyes when he says it, focusing on the NPR logo on Steve’s shirt.

Steve’s finger traces the curve of his ear. “Oh? Huh. I guess I haven’t. You think maybe that’s ‘cause I didn’t know you wanted me to?” His voice is teasing, and he settles into holding Bucky’s earlobe between finger and thumb.

“You’ve mentioned it at least four times. Granted, in four years, but.”

“I think I’ve mentioned unionizing all the strangers I’m gonna hire to fist you at least twice in a couple years. I mention a lot of things, Buck. You ever noticed?”

“What, and you think I don’t want unionized fisting?” The NPR logo’s not much to look at. Steve’s eyes are a lot more to look at. They don't squint but _suggest_ squinting as Bucky adds, “It’s just not realistic. Any stuff you say that’s realistic, I probably want it.”

“Great. So if it’s realistic, tell me you want it. You know better than to make me do all the guesswork.” His thumb _bonks_ scoldingly against the side of Bucky's nose.

“Oh. Yeah, sorry. I do know.”

“I know you do.”

“But I honestly thought I must’ve said it at, I don't know. Some point.”

“Maybe you did and I forgot. We can call it even.”

“I don’t think you’d forget a thing like that. Sorry.”

“Yeah, all right. Then you’ll just think of a real way to apologize. No more of this ‘sorry’ nonsense. I expect better.”

“Mm. I promise to beg for it a lot, all right? A real pathetic amount. That sufficient?” An affirmation’s hummed in his ear. “But, uh later. Why’d you knock on the door?”

“Come to the living room.”

“Why’s my name Ike now?”

“Did I or did I not just tell you to come to the living room?”

“I gotta right now?”

“There’s a ninety-nine percent chance you gotta right now.”

“Wow, you 're starting to understand statistics. I owe you a kiss when this gunk’s off. No, I’m coming now, okay.”

Steve makes a disgusted noise, but says, “I _guess_ I can allow you to kiss some part of me if it’ll stop you from whining about it.”

“Very gracious, your Majesty. Maybe just your knee, you know, through three layers of pants, if that protects you from my cooties better.”

“We'll workshop some options. Seriously, you didn't have other plans before bed?" There's that look in his eyes and set to his mouth that isn't hesitance or nervousness, but care, which is a similar creature, but more solid. Stronger bones.

"Bath. Face mask. Spend time with St—you." It's not scribbled on an index card anymore, but spending time with Steve is how he likes to end most nights, being a loving and loved kinda person instead of fretting over work bullshit or global affairs bullshit or body bullshit or brain bullshit or the impulse to bleach the bathtub for the third time in a week.

"Yeah, I like spending time with stew—sorry, _you_ —too."

"No kidding?"

"Well. Lots of kidding. I'm a kidding kinda guy. But not that." And then he's got his game face on. Clue, checkers, vigilante work, warfare, fucking with Bucky: all precipitated by the same face.  

In short succession, Steve yanks him out the door and in the direction of the living room by the wrist, lets go of his wrist to get behind him and shove him hard between the shoulder blades, and puts an arm around his waist, tugging like Bucky can’t walk, like he’s dead weight for dragging. It’s not only Bucky’s blood that's getting chaotically redirected today, dizzy and turned around.

All that together is sufficient jostling to make the loose towel around his waist fall to the ground.

Alternative theory: all that was a diversion while Steve performed the sleight of hand of yanking the thing right off. Simple, to the point: Steve’s style except when it’s not at all.

He almost trips over the fluffy towel at his feet, regretfully catching himself first. But then Steve’s sneaker appears in his path. Bucky flails as he falls, and twists to land on his back. He spreads out his limbs. Ready to make snow angels. “ _Ow_.”

Steve moves slow, rescuing the fallen towel, and comes to stand with his shoes bracketing Bucky’s knees. The way he rakes his eyes up and down Bucky’s body is dispassionate, and he twists the towel up into a rope like it’s just something to do with his hands. Origami or crochet or one of those whatever the hell a fidget spinner is.

Every deli a few months ago had big hand-lettered signs advertising the spidget finners as either IN STOCK NOW!!! or SOLD OUT STOP ASKING!!! The first time they walked past one together, Steve whispered in his ear, “I’ve got my own fidgety little toy for spinning right here,” and Bucky’s laugh was like a sneeze and he wormed his gloved hand into Steve’s coat pocket, greedy, in that moment, for as much physical closeness as he could get.

Steve settles his eyes around Bucky’s crotch, squinting, and he laughs his way through, “Hey, Buck, I can see your Johnson. It’s as ugly as your face, just like I guessed.”

Bucky gasps theatrically and looks down at himself. As he does, Steve lowers the towel, and it begins to unfurl, dangling right above Bucky’s soft—Jesus Christ— _Johnson_. Bucky splutters. “Oh, oh, g-gosh. I’m so sorry. That’s so inappropriate. If you just hand me the towel back—”

“Aw, but I wanna see the rest. Come on.” He kicks at Bucky’s hip, not so gentle. “Show me your ass. I want to know if it’s just as stupid-looking too. Your balls certainly are. From where I'm standing, at least.”

Even as he’s complying, bending his knees, slowly pulling his thighs up to his chest, Bucky makes a grab for the dangling towel, and says, “Please. It was an, an accident. Can I just—”

The towel’s yanked away. “Nuh-uh. Show me.” He kicks at Bucky’s ass, gentler. Only a prompt, and Bucky obeys, curls his legs fully up and gets his hands behind his knees and everything, feeling like a roach flipped on its back.

“This okay?” he asks, trying to sound timid. Probably succeeding, judging by how stern Steve's face goes.

“Is that it? You don’t have anything else?”

“What—No?”

“I read on the internet that sometimes there are secret menus. What’s your secret menu? You got a better body back there you’re hiding from me?”

“Steve! What the fuck?” In a whole-body laugh, he drops one knee, leg falling to the side so he’s splayed open. “You—Ah!” The towels hits the upturned inside of his thigh, hardly furled at all, hardly any sensation at all. Like a huge fluffy dog _almost_ came barreling into him, missing at the last second but skimming him with its passing fur.

Steve slaps it down on his chest next. Grunts, and says, “Jesus, this thing stays where I put it worse than you.” Pauses to roll it up tight again before aiming a harder blow at the side of Bucky’s ass that’s still exposed for his inspection. Without being told, Bucky gets his hand back behind his other knee, puts his whole ass on display, and tries to stay where Steve put him. “And that’s saying a lot.”

Hitting him harder doesn’t mean much in this context, even as Steve picks up the pace, whapping Bucky all over like he’s trying to put out a kitchen fire. Not that he'd actually manage to put out any fires this way, with how much air he’s stirring up. Kindling Bucky with bursts of oxygen, forcing him to burn brighter. It’s not the bright burn of pain, but of attention, all Steve’s focus and efforts on him even if nothing will come of it. Even if Steve’s wasting his time, with how the occasional flick of the tag’s edge against Bucky’s skin is the closest the towel skirts to hurting him.

                                                                        

If they were putting on a radio show about him getting beat, then this would be perfect. A chorus of heavy thwaps, and the listeners could picture him at the mercy of a rubber flogger, or maybe a very enthusiastically wielded scuba diving fin.

But here, in the recording studio with the actors, “It’s barely even wet! That doesn’t hurt!”

Still, he lifts his arms to protect himself, finally dropping both knees. Cowers and covers his face while laughing, batting back at the towel. It should be more afraid of him than he is of it, considering he could rip it in half without hardly trying. Here, in the recording studio, he acts his heart out for all the Steves listening at home.

“You don’t get to decide that. It hurts if I say it hurts.”

“Oh, yeah, my bad. Ow, ow! I’m suffering!”

“Good.” One last whack to his mouth and nose, and Bucky kisses the towel before it drops to cover his face, leaving him in the dark.

“ _Ow._ ” He stops half-way through his instinctual move to grab the thing and throw it across the room. It’s Steve’s business if he wants Bucky’s face buried beneath a towel forever.

But then Steve’s kneeling next to him, throwing the towel to the side, saying, “I’ll wash it tonight,” before Bucky can even protest. Bucky hums his thanks. Kisses Steve’s nearest knuckle. And Steve digs his fingers into Bucky’s ribs, tickling him, so Bucky screeches and twists, giggling, pulled so fast out of that peaceful lull, while Steve says, “Hey, Buck, I can still see your throbbing member, you little freak. You go around flashing everyone like that? Huh?”

“No!” Bucky gets out. “Just you! I promise!” The last word mutates into a wheeze. His body’s producing laughter much faster than he can expel it, stockpiling loud joy inside the bomb shelter of his ribs. And beneath that bomb shelter: a coming earthquake, tremors. "My fucking throbbing member's—God, how'd you say that with—with a straight face?"

“Oh, you’re only rude to me? That right?”

“Yes! No? Steven, it is _evening_! Steve, fuck, mercy!” Steve stops, and grabs the flesh around Bucky’s ribs instead, hand a claw shape. Bucky’s abs tighten. The warm dispersed pain of it sharpens when he tries to take a deep breath. Sharper still when he says primly, “It is almost _bedtime_. I don’t think it’s exactly legal to have this level of boisterous energy when the sun’s been down for so—Ah!”

He's been scooped up in a bridal carry. Released, his gripped flesh remains warm and sore. “What?" Steve says. "I’m having fun. Are you having fun?”

“No, I’m dying of boredom.” He pecks Steve on the cheek. The arm under his legs shifts, sliding away like Steve’s planning to drop him, and even though that would just drop him into standing, he yelps and shoves himself harder against Steve, kicking out to try to get his legs around his waist. Steve’s arm slips into place, secure. He's laughing silently. Bucky butts the top of his head against Steve’s chin.

Steve says, “That more exciting for you?”

“I’m having fun. You’re a hoot. Just thought I should _remind_ _you_ I’m going to bed soon, so if you had a whole complex, gymnastic, y'know. Get disappointed.”

“Oh, gosh, really? And here I was hoping you'd do two hours of upside-down hot yoga while I threw eggs at your ass.”

“Well, dear, maybe if you wait 'til I’m unconscious. And try not to make too much noise.”

Steve snorts. He pecks Bucky on the cheek in return as they step into the living room.

The TV’s switched on to the words, “Breaking News,” in bold white text against a red background. The news doesn’t break; the screen stays static. A cord trails from the TV’s side, disappearing into Steve’s laptop where it rests open on the floor.

“There’s a PowerPoint.”

Steve dumps him onto the couch in a sprawl. “Wow, how’d you figure that out?”

Bucky stays how he was dropped, awkward as it is, gazing up at Steve. While Bucky talks, Steve helpfully works on righting him. “You learned how to use PowerPoint.” He’s being positioned like a doll at a tea party. Back straight, feet on the floor. Hands in his lap. Fingers laced together over his dick. Steve’s careful to manipulate each individual finger into place while Bucky keeps himself pliant.

“It wasn’t hard. I just didn’t want to.”

“Yeah, I know. It was very inconvenient of you.”

“Do you want to see the PowerPoint or not?”

“You learned to use PowerPoint _and_ the HDMI connection. Steve, you have no idea how turned on I am right now.”

“In case you forgot, I can see your throbbing member. And I said it with a straight face by practicing.” He nudges at Bucky’s folded hands, which don’t hide him all the way, not with how he’s begun filling up. The heels of his hands brush the sides of his dick with the motion and he gulps. “Got no good sense of decency, do you?”

“I'm _sorry_. I asked for my towel back!”

“Stop whining. If you go around dropping your towel on the dirty floor, you’re clearly not responsible enough to deserve a towel, now are you?”

“No. I’m not. You’re right, Steve.”

“That’s what I thought. Tell me if you get cold.”

“I’m cold.”

Steve laughs. “No, you’re not,” and no, he’s not. He’d feel guilty for lying if he weren’t so transparent. Or if Steve didn’t have such Bucky-specific x-ray vision, more like. Regardless, Steve gets a quilt off the armchair’s back and drapes it over Bucky’s shoulders. While Bucky snuggles in, rubbing his cheek against the fabric, Steve sets himself up at the laptop, and _click_ , here they go. The red curtain of the opening slide rises to reveal red text on white this time.

THIS PRESENTATION IS MULTIMEDIA.

Bucky says, “Yeah? And what's that mean?”

“Well, Buck, _Webster’s Dictionary_ defines multimedia as—”

“No, please.”

“In the _Oxford English_ —”

“Steve!”

“Hush.” He raises an eyebrow. “Stop being rude while I’m trying to educate you.”

“My heartfelt apologies, honey. Are you going to make me another flash card?”

“I’m gonna make you choke on another flash card, you don’t behave. But yes, if you want.”

“Thanks.”

“You still have them?”

“Of course. What do I look like?” Held together with a thin gold ribbon, they live beneath his floorboard most days. Difficult days, they ride along in the inner pocket of his jacket, a lucky rabbit’s foot. Just in case.

“Hmm. Today? Like an overgrown mutt I saved from the river. Got seaweed all over you. An empty chip bag stuck on your head.”

“Wow, I sound pathetic. You planning to clean me up?”

“When we’re done here.” Another click, and the slide stays the same, but smaller text fades into view lower on the screen:

Multimedia - adjective - kinda like a museum.

“Steve, I love you, you idiot.”

He holds his breath for a reprimand, but all Steve says to that is, “Hmm. Sounds right.” So they're playing fast and loose with how polite he needs to be. That's the kind of daredevil living on the edge Bucky likes to indulge in these days.

He adds, sounding almost childishly certain and proud, “You love me.”

“You idiot. Sounds right too.” He clears his throat and says, “And now, our first museum exhibit.” A click switches the screen to a big black number one against white.

Coming close, Steve takes Bucky by the wrist and pulls that hand toward himself palm up. A metal-on-metal _clack_ when he drops something into the palm and curls the fingers closed around it.

“Okay, look what I gave you.” His grip on Bucky's wrist stays, but he squats down.

It’s a round pin-back button, almost the full size of Bucky’s palm. Red white and blue. Reminiscent of the Pepsi logo, but with straighter lines. Less fun-loving (and yes, Bucky knows Pepsi’s evil, okay; they’ve talked about it a million times because they're tragically boring people, but he knows first-hand that evil often loves fun more than anyone).

The white bits are yellowed, and the paint’s scratched in places. And the broad white section in the center says in bold letters, “I LIKE IKE.”

It’s not unfamiliar. Maybe something he saw when he was first binging on the details of how they got from point one to point B, what America was doing when he was in and out of sleep. He shuts an eye and holds the button up in front of him like looking down a barrel, thinking that might slot it into place in his memory, but no. Nothing his brain decided mattered.

“Where’s this from?”

Steve’s been watching his examination of the button with his mouth pursed around suppressed entertainment. “Stoop sale down the street.”

“Uh-huh.” Bucky looks at it again. Back to Steve. Back to the button. More pointedly at Steve, but all Steve does is let his mouth un-purse into a smile, no explanation forthcoming, so Bucky rolls his eyes and prompts, “Okay. At a stoop sale down the street, you bought a button that says ‘I like Ike.’”

“You’re getting better at paying attention, Buck. That's cute.”

“Uh-huh. So now I’m Ike. Because, what? You wanted a way to say you like me that I won’t whine about? I don’t wanna imply that you’re not the most convoluted person I know, but even for you—”

“Okay, nope. Shut your mouth. I don’t remember giving you permission to pretend you have any critical thinking skills.” Bucky shuts his mouth. “I’m not trying to say I _like_ you. Don’t get conceited. I just think you need some new aliases. I’ve been making a list.”

Bucky raises his hand. Steve nods at a spot over his head, and points. “Yes, floor lamp? You have a question?”

Fully prepared to wrench his arm out of the socket, Bucky raises his hand higher, glaring, but then Steve’s simultaneously cupping one hand around his own ear as if to listen better and covering his mouth with the other hand and making high-pitched gibberish noises behind it. His eyes remain glued on the lamp.

Bucky attempts to mouth, _What the fuck, Steven_ , without un-shutting his mouth. Hopefully it looks more intimidating than it feels, because he feels like a bunny rabbit twitching its nose.

Uncovering his mouth and un-cupping his ear, Steve says, not in gibberish. “That’s a good question, floor lamp. Why _does_ Bucky need new aliases?”

Bucky puts his hand down. The fact that Steve guessed his question, obvious as it might have been, floods him with the affectionate feral desire to pounce on Steve and bite his nose and then roll over and offer his face up to be thoroughly chewed on.Steve can chew the mask off and then spit it, pre-masticated, into Bucky’s mouth and make him swallow it, seventeen dollars and questionable chemical compounds be damned. Now that's a romantic night in.

The point is, he doesn’t even use an alias at work, yet no one’s had a conniption about the smiling and occasionally small-talking corpse in a white and yellow duck-print cardigan who somehow got past security. In light of that, drawing him up a whole list of aliases is whatever the most excessive synonym of _excessive_ is. _Superfluous_ has got eleven letters to _excessive_ ’s pathetic nine, so that, then.

Steve says, “Was anyone else wondering why he needs new aliases?” Bucky’s hand shoots up. Steve acts like he’s trying to see over the top of a skyscraper. Swivels to scan the room and mouths, _One, two, three, four, wow, five._ He points more or less everywhere except at Bucky. “Wow, popular question. Good thing I’m going to answer it.”

“ _When?_ ”

The sigh Steve forces out could extinguish all the candles on a birthday cake acknowledging his actual linear age. He walks toward Bucky with the air of someone going to pick up their dropped pencil, and Bucky presses himself as far into the couch back as he can. Not to get away, but to give Steve more space to work. To do whatever he’s gonna do to him. Which is get his knees on either side of Bucky’s thighs, and a hand on each of Bucky’s shoulders, looming with his face tipped down, shadowed, mouth firm.

Bucky says, “Hi,” in a small voice, and Steve’s eyebrow and mouth both twitch, and he says, “Hi,” and leans back and grabs the edges of the quilt. He pulls it closed around Bucky. The edges overlap like on a dressing gown, so he’s thoroughly covered from knees to neck, with his arms trapped inside, when Steve lowers himself to sit on his lap.

Some parts of Bucky are grateful that his dick’s protected from direct contact with the rough denim of Steve’s jeans; the dick part of him isn’t very grateful, but that thing lacks self-preservation instincts. Always has.

Steve says, “See, you think I’m not going to slap you ’cause you’ve got that shit on your face.”

Bucky's sharpest tooth bites into his lip. He considers rescinding that request and asking Steve to slap him as much as he likes. The mask’s been on plenty long and it's starting to itch and he’s gotta clean it off _somehow._

But while he’s still furiously spinning the little wheel that lowers words down in a bucket on a rope from his brain to be poured onto his tongue, Steve says, “But you know, unlike some things around here, I don’t forget everything just two minutes after it happens. I have some fucking patience. I can wait to slap you until you’ve got that washed off, and your skin’s nice and damp, and—" He snaps his fingers imperiously in front of Bucky's nose. "Think of another adjective that’ll work to my advantage.”

“It’ll be more sensitive? Should be, probably The blood and uh, toxins. Are being pulled to the surface. That’s what the package claims it should do, and the saleslady. Youtube reviews.”

“Good. So we’re in agreement. Glad you’re finally putting _some_ effort into cleaning yourself out.”

“I’m trying!" Steve's face doesn't even do anything, but Bucky feels doubted anyway. "I’ll try harder. Whatever you want. I’ll put leeches on my skin, it makes me cleaner for you.”

“Nah. I’m the only leech I want sucking on your skin.”

Bucky grins. “Okay, I’ll think of something else. I'll start filling my guts with cold water on the regular. Wash my own mouth out with soap every morning maybe, you think that makes me more palatable." The interested flex of Steve's hands gets filed away for later exploration. "You want an apology?”

“How ‘bout we say it’s an apology if you ask your question politely, hmm?”

“Steve?”

“What?”

He tries to look as pleading as possible when he stares into Steve's eyes. If only he could pop his eyes out of the sockets and hold them, naked, flush against Steve’s face. “I know it’s asking a lot and I probably won’t even be able to understand the answer, and you have every right not to tell me, and it would just be because you know what’s good for me, because you’re _so_ smart and magnanimous—”

“Is there a question somewhere in here?”

Bucky stays sweet and pleading, but hopes Steve can tell he’s rolling his eyes in spirit.

“Yes. May I know why I need new aliases, Steve, treasure of my heart, please?”

“Sure, Buck. Because it’s funny. And because I said so.”

“Oh.”

“What do you mean, 'Oh?'”

“That’s okay then.”

“Why the hell else?” For the first time tonight, Steve looks fully thrown off his game.

“I don’t know if something came up!”

“Buck. An actual issue demanding you need aliases crops up, I promise to tell it to you straight instead of making an insane game.”

Really, he knew that. Was nine-tenths of the way to confident. It's just that it's almost bedtime, and he's a crazy person. They both are.

“You know, that makes sense now that you say it?”

“Glad you agree.”

“You could make it kind of a game, though. Like I pick a card, any card, but all the cards say, ‘You’ve been compromised and in you’re in danger and I don’t mean it in a sweet or fun way!’ That’s a nice game.”

“That’s a terrible game. I’ll keep it in mind. We good?”

 “You’re good. I don’t wanna make hasty claims about myself.”

“Hmm. I think you’re pretty good.”

“Well, you’re a weird guy. Got a lotta divisive opinions on things.”

“Sure do.” He kisses the top of Bucky’s head. “I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“Not your fault I’m crazy.”

“No," he concedes, "not my fault. But part of my responsibilities anyway. So lemme apologize how I like." He swats Bucky's thigh, more gesture than feeling. "And let me get back to my PowerPoint.”

“Yeah, okay.” No more warm Steve bulk weighing him down. _Click_.

A swathe of blue gradient, the white words, “EXHIBIT B,” and in zoom two photos. Paintings hanging themselves on the wall of a gallery, automating gallery assistants out of a job. First photo’s of a cardboard box, in their very own hallway, about the size of, say, one Pac-Man machine, to pick a commonly used reference point for estimating the sizes of things.

The other’s a close-up on the mailing label affixed to the box, addressed to Harry Truman Farms.

It had lived in their home for less than a day before Bucky broke it down and took it out for recycling. If _he’d_ come in a box and Steve had kept that box lying around where he could see, he knows he’d feel like he was living with the omnipresent threat of being shipped back to sender.

And maybe he’d enjoy that or maybe it would crush his spirit—hard to guess, honestly—but it was best to err on caution's side and make sure the Pac-Man machine knew that this was its forever home. It shouldn’t have to suck in a little panicked breath each time Bucky’s door swung open to reveal the lurking cardboard casket out there.

The cardboard video game casket, to be clear, had lived in their home for less than a day _two years ago._

“Steve. How long have you been working on this?”

“I haven’t actively been working on it. You know, Buck, sometimes in life you find something, and it doesn’t seem like it’s worth anything right now. But you know you’ll figure out a use for it one day, so you keep it around. Next slide.”

“You’re slipping. You’re not gonna take the chance to all dramatic-like say, ‘Oh, who, who, in this room does that remind—”

“Oh, well, if the shoe—” Steve grins at him.

“Oh my god.”

“If you saw yourself in what I was saying—”

“Next slide! What’s the next slide?”

“Who’s slipping here?”

“I’m _tired_ and I _can’t_ be slipping if my job is to be stupid. Fine. You’ve still got it. You’re sharp. You’re a fucking tack. Next slide. Please?”

“Yeah, you’re not slipping. You did exactly what I wanted you to.” He ruffles Bucky’s hair, or implies ruffling with a quick rub. It can’t be ruffled properly, pulled back so tight.

“And I’m tired.”

“I know. I’ll put you to bed soon. Stop whining.”

The next slide says, “LET’S GET TO THE POINT,” above a photo of Steve frowning. The slide after that gets to the point, with the header, “ALIASES FOR THAT STUPID THING I OWN.”

They fly in from off-stage one by one, and Bucky greets each with a brand new peal of laughter:

  * Teddy Roosevelt Stables
  * Millard Fillmore Siloes
  * Herbert Hoover Cowsheds
  * Woodrow Wilson Pigpens
  * Dwight Eisenhower Doghouses



“All right,” Steve says when Bucky’s settled most of the way down, stopped clutching his gut and coughing up laughs like hairballs. One leg’s still pulled up onto the couch with him, and he’s curled in on himself kinda, hand holding his own shoulder. Protecting the happiness glowing in his stomach. “Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“No? Do _you_ even see where you’re going with this? Wherever it is, I’m sure it’s real lovely, but I think one of us should go in less than blindfolded so we don’t crash."

"Oh yeah?"

"Well. So you don’t crash. I’m happy to crash.”

“Since when I am not happy to crash, pal?”

“If you crash, who’s gonna check whether I’ve got a concussion?”

Steve taps his chin ostentatiously. “Don’t they have phone apps that can do that now?”

“You’d trust an app with my care and handling? That’s insulting.”

“Good.”

“The wrong _kind_ of insulting!”

“You use that app that checks your heart rate.”

“That’s different.”

“Not seeing how.”

“I don’t want anyone but you checking me for concussions, Steve. Ever. Please.” His voice is more scraped raw than he thinks is reasonable; tension he hadn't realized was in Steve's shoulders suddenly bleeds out. The tension Bucky _knew_ was in his own shoulders makes a game attempt to follow Steve's. Tension after his own heart.

"I promise,” Steve says. He's right there, big hand hovering by Bucky's cheek, so sweet by not making contact. But Bucky's over that kind of sweetness. He moves his face into Steve's touch, tilts his head up and purses his lips to ask for a kiss.

He gets more kisses than he asked for. He's living a real spoiled life, and puts his hand to Steve's face too. Left hand to Steve's right cheek, Steve's left hand to _his_ right cheek, their faces are boxed in together, kind of. A loose box. A boxing ring, and Steve makes good on that by hurting Bucky, biting his lip until he draws out a moan.

The kiss ends there, and Bucky whispers, “You gotta click.”

Steve blinks twice fast, and then jabs his finger into Bucky’s cheekbone, sudden enough that Bucky finds himself blinking fast too, the nail’s hard bite reverberating, and says, “Click?”

“Wha—The laptop! You gotta—Fuck. _Steve._ ”

"No one's fucking Steve," Steve scolds.

"No, we're just _clicking_ Bucky, apparently."

"That's right."

"Click the _touchpad_ on the _laptop_ , Steve. I wanna see your presentation."

With a harder parting click to Bucky's face, Steve says good-naturedly, "Watch your fuckin' tone."

With a click to the laptop touchpad, where Bucky's seen the pin-back button before clicks into place in his brain. And it's a relief to feel confident that this is something unimportant he forgot when he was filling in the historical gap. Not something related first-hand to the moments inside those smaller gaps of awakeness.

Trust Steve to not have just cobbled together some copy and paste from the Dwight Eisenhower Wikipedia page. Wrapped around a photo of the guy and another photo of the button when it was brand new _and_ a drawing of two doghouses stacked on top of each other is a whole mini-report in Steve's own words, sources cited and all.

Bucky's crazy brain is outraged that he skims instead of reading every single word from first to last. But he's pretty sure Steve wouldn't be outraged, and that's all that matters; Steve probably wouldn't care if he didn't even go so far as to skim. No info on the slide's particularly the point beyond: Ike = Dwight Eisenhower, and Bucky = Dwight Eisenhower Doghouses. Ergo, Bucky = Ike Doghouses, which means?

Bucky says, "Okay, so that means?"

“You tell me, smart guy."

"A _smart_ guy?" Bucky stares around frantically, pitches his voice up like panic. "Where is he? Baby, get the machine gun. I'll hold him off while you—"

"Buck, I will _pay_ you to shut up." But he looks like his heart's got hearts in its eyes. "Fine. I _guess_ I can stoop to spelling it out for you." He stoops literally, coming close and leaning down into Bucky's space to take the I LIKE IKE button out of his hand and hold it flat in his own palm. "So you see this? I’m gonna paint right over it.”

“You couldn’t have just a bought a blank one?”

“Not the whole thing, shh. But see—” And he draws a fingernail careful over the word like striking it out with a fountain pen— “‘like’ will become ‘tolerate,’ because what I _like_ is being honest.”

“Oh, sure. That’s believable.”

That gets him a sharp glare. “How many times I gotta shush you tonight? A good fucktoy listens the first time.”

“Sorry," and he is. “I guess that’s why you only tolerate me, huh?”

“Yeah.” Steve laughs. “Must be something like that.” A hard flick to Bucky’s collarbone sends him flinching forward, tugged by his abs and his skipped-a-beat heart. With just one hard snap of a fingernail, it’s like Steve lassoed both, one golden lasso each, and yanked, some double-handed Wild West stunt trick shit. Looks like he's been getting more ambitious since learning how to spin a gun.

Bucky says, “Yeah, yeah, all right, I’m,” and zips and locks his lips, and tucks the key snug into the chest pocket of Steve’s shirt.

“Better boy.” Steve pats the pocket where he’s keeping Bucky’s voice safe. “As I was saying. ‘Like’ becomes ‘tolerate.’ And ‘Ike’ becomes ‘Dwight Eisenhower Doghouses.’ I could put it on a backpack and carry it around and everyone’ll know exactly how I feel about you, huh? They won’t know that’s what they know. But we’ll know that’s what they know, and that’s what matters. Knew the moment I saw it, here was my chance to tell the world how I feel about my dumb little pet and his dumb little name. You like that?”

Bucky nods. He really, really does.

“What’s that?”

Bucky nods harder, and Steve cups a hand around his own ear again. “Sorry, Buck. You know I’m a little hard of hearing. If you could speak up, please?”

Bucky frowns and squirms his zipped and locked lips around the way he might squirm his whole body around to test he’s been securely tied up. Bugs his eyes out in distress. Jabs at his lips with the fingers of one hand, denying himself entrance all the while. With the other hand, he points frantically at Steve’s shirt pocket.

Steve’s laughing at him. His big sharp tea-yellowed teeth are all on display. “What’s that, Buck? Huh? You like it or not?” Then, “Okay, okay, okay,” when Bucky forces a high whine out through the minute spaces between his phantom mouth zipper’s interlocking teeth. Steve reaches into his shirt pocket and twists his fingers at the corner of Bucky’s mouth.

Sweetly, even though Bucky let him touch a few minutes ago, he avoids making even the tiniest bit of contact with the mask when he whistles in lieu of a unzipping sound and swipes his fingers over Bucky’s lips, freeing those lips up to announce, “I love it, but you’re full of shit.”

“Excuse me? Someone’s got a mouth on him tonight. What am I gonna do with you, huh?” He puts the key back in his pocket, in case what he needs to do is lock Bucky’s smart mouth up again.

“You’re gonna do whatever you like with me, and I’ll thank you for it profusely. But bullshit. That was _not_ your original plan when you bought that fucking button.”

“Yeah? What was my plan, non-smart guy?”

“‘Tolerate,’ okay, yeah, you were gonna go with ‘tolerate.’ You _weren’t_ gonna write any ‘Dwight Eisenhower Doghouses.’”

“What then?”

“You were gonna put a ‘B’ in front of ‘Ike.’ And you were gonna put a ‘y’ after. And my new name was gonna be ‘Bikey’ for the next seven weeks. I know you. You can’t trick me.”

“You were already Bikey for seven weeks decades ago. Give me some credit.”

“Absolutely not. You’ve got lousy credit history.”

Steve straightens up and crosses his arms over his chest, looking actually offended. “I do _not_.”

“Steve. Really? I’ve lived with you most of the parts of my life that matter any.”

“Captain America automatically has perfect credit history!”

“You’re not Captain America anymore. The IRS wants you dead again.”

“Fine, okay? The IRS is sending out its best assassins _._ But you’re wrong about the other part.”

“You were gonna write ‘Bikey.’ I’m _not_ budging on this.”

Steve's exactly the same person now that he was at eight years old, when he misspoke introducing Bucky to a neighbor and for a moment looked embarrassed, until he'd had a second to dwell on things, and then he looked over the moon. And Bucky groaned, knowing Steve would dig his teeth into the name "Bikey" like a fish unwilling to admit the worm it bit is bait, and Mrs. Whocanremember asked him if he was _feeling all right—Mikey, you said?_

"Bikey, ma'am," a Rumplestiltskin-sized Steve corrected. "With a B." He shrugged, and stuck his hands in his pockets. "It's a family name." The moment Mrs. AreyoufeelingallrightMikey wasn't looking, Bucky stomped on Steve's foot, and Steve bit down any sound of pain and stuck his tongue out at Bucky, eyebrows up high.

“You can’t prove that in a court of law,” Steve says now, in his body like fifteen Rumplestiltskins sharing a trench coat.

“Course I can. I got uh, cassettes? Like Watergate, right? Recording every dumb name you’ve ever called me. All I gotta do is play ‘em for a jury of my peers—”

“What peers? Some broken vacuum cleaners?”

“Sweetheart? Fuck off. I play those tapes for a jury of some upstanding vacuum cleaner citizens, it’ll be plain as the nose occupying ⅞ of the real estate on your perfect face that you’re the exact kind of dumbass that would spend _money_ on the chance to call me Bikey.”

“You have no idea how badly I want to slap you right now.”

“Well, if it’s anything like how bad I want you to…" He shifts, thighs rubbing together. "Is the PowerPoint over?”

“Almost. There’s some photos of you with your tongue out. An American flag. And—”

“And?”

“It was just a thought. You raising your hand like that—Was thinking of doing, uh. A roll call? Make you answer to all of those.” Adorably sheepish, he rubs the back of his neck, and Bucky can't help but tease him.

“Wow, student/teacher roleplay. _Steven_. The clichedness. You wanna?”

“Nah." To show he's saying the final word on the subject, Steve slips the button out of sight, into his back pocket. "Now I’m too much in the mood to wash you off. Smack you around. Put you to bed.”

Bucky huffs dramatically. “Well, if you _must._ The idea’s enough to make me wanna blow a load anyway.”

“Perfect.”

“I can yell, ‘Here,’ and ‘Present,’ and wave my hand around and all that jazz while you hit me too.”

“Aw, look at you having an idea that isn’t colossally idiotic.” His mouth twitches at how Bucky beams in response. “Come on then, ugly. Bathroom. Let’s see if I can make you sorry for talking back so much.”

“Yeah, ‘cause that’s a real question.”

“And there you go again. I’ve got my work cut out for me.”

“Sorry. I just know you like having a job to do. I’m trying to help.”

“Uh-huh. Such a giver, Buck.”

When Steve tugs him off the couch and toward the door, Bucky tries to take the quilt with him. But Steve tuts and lets his grip on Bucky’s hand go so he can peel him like a particularly cozy banana. Out pops the pale, mushy fruit he was looking for. Insufficiently bruised, not over-ripe enough to bake into banana bread; hopefully Steve will be rectifying that soon. Making tender dark spots blossom all over him.

He must catch Bucky’s glare at the heap the quilt lands in on the couch and says, “I’ll come back and fold it later, drama queen. Towel? Quilt? My problem. Not yours.”

“Yeah, but I’m _cold_ now.”

“Then come on. Let me fix that for you. Got lots of ideas how.”

"Like what?"

"Well—"

He wraps himself around Bucky from behind, arms over shoulders, and chin on top of Bucky's head—he must be on tip-toes. Walking that way's awkward, and Bucky shimmies his shoulders under Steve's arms. Every step, he's almost tripped by the legs barely not bracketing his, and they'll take an hour to get to the bathroom at this rate. They didn't come first place at any three-leg races when they were kids and they're not gonna come first place at this even with no one else competing.

Steve whispers in his ear, "Warmer than a quilt, right?" and he's not laughing but he _is_ laughing, obviously. Somewhere in there.

With a grunt and a, "You know what? Look," Bucky slouches to slide his arms under the backs of Steve's knees, and lifts.

Two can play at being puppy-boisterous, and the resulting _yip_ of surprise and winded-sounding, "Jesus fucking shit!" make him snicker. The arms around his shoulders tighten into the suggestion of a chokehold. Even as he's tightening his legs too, knees digging into Bucky's sides like he's urging on a horse, Steve says, "Don't hurt yourself. You throw out your back—"

"I'm _fine_. It's ten yards at most." He jostles Steve a little as they turn into the hallway. In retaliation, Steve twists one of his nipples, and now it's Bucky's turn to make an embarrassing surprised sound.

"What," Steve says, stroking the pinched nipple gently, so Bucky shivers for reasons unrelated to pretending to be cold, "your brain? More like ten centimeters."

"Here I am giving you chauffeured transportation and you're being mean to me."

"Yes," he says in his self-important recording-a-PSA voice, "I _am_ a very nice man."

"Sweetest spouse on the eastern seaboard, I tell ya." That's the truth. Steve's a hot solid weight on him, the kindest and strongest back brace.

He's pretty sure it's the truth, too, that this won't kill his spine. When Steve's not around to fuss, Bucky's been practicing carrying things. Extra books in his bag. The Pac-Man machine. Sometimes it hurts and he learns to adjust his form. The physical therapy tutorials he's been following on YouTube might be helping too. It's all worth it for this.

For the pleased sigh in his ear as Steve digs his knees in even harder. And the way his arms slither down to Bucky's chest and wrap him up once they've crossed onto the bathroom tiles and he's lowered Steve gingerly to standing again.

"Toldja I'd pay you back for the piggy back ride after you murdered me, you know."

"Mm, you did. Good boy, keeping your word."

"Whatever you say."

"Yep." One more squeezing hug, and then he's shoving Bucky in the direction of the toilet. "And right now, I say sit. It's smacking time for pets that talk back too much." _Too much_ is the best part, how Bucky will never get a clear answer on where that line's drawn.

"Where? Who you talking about?" But he obediently sits on the closed toilet lid even though it's uncomfortably cold against his bare ass, and smiles up at Steve, who's standing with his hands on his hips.

Steve says, "Take it all off," like Bucky's not already naked for him. Naked for him whenever he wants.

"Kinda need to use the sink for that."

"Fine. Do what you need to get yourself all sensitized and detoxin-ified for me and _then_ sit down."

"Bled. Leeched."

"The scientific terms."

"Says 'em on the packaging." He fishes said packaging out of their tiny pink trash can and hands it over to Steve before getting to work rinsing the bubbly mud champagne nonsense off his face.

Long enough later that he's more or less finished and Steve's definitely read it all—and it's a lot, almost as much as any given page from Bucky's diary that's chockablock with cramped handwriting upside-down and backwards and occasionally regular—Steve says, "This definitely...does say a lot of things. Is your skin really gonna be perkier? How's that work?"

Watching a whole faceful of orange muddy goop slurge down the drain, Bucky says a prayer for their plumbing. Says it out loud and Steve ignores it the way he does every rare prayer Bucky says out loud because, again, he's the sweetest spouse on the Eastern Seaboard. _Not_ to be ignored, Bucky says, "Y'know, I don't know and I really don't wanna find out. I shouldn't dry off, right?"

"And lessen the sting? Yeah, sure. Sit, boy."

"Yessir." He Boy Scout salutes on his way to sitting back down, and Steve, ever-wasteful, grabs a towel down off their shelves solely to swat at him before dropping it on the floor. This time, there's no pacifying promise to wash or fold or whatever it later. That message has sunk in for the night.

Now's the time for Steve to focus on sinking in a new message. He grabs Bucky by the ponytail, pulls his head back just enough that his neck can feel that something's about to happen, and manages to look and sound stern when he says, "I tried to do something nice for you tonight, Buck. Right?"

"Yes, Steve. Right."

"I learned to use the pointy power program. I learned to use the fucking DIMH cable. You know how boring that was?"

It's very hard not to smile. "Extremely, I'm sure." A warning yank on his hair. "Sorry. I'm sorry.                                                           

"Uh-huh. I gave you some nice new names too. Went and bought an _antique_ so I could show off one of those names. And what did I get for my troubles?" Another yank. "Looking for an answer here."

"Backtalk?"

"Yup. What should I do about that, you think? You think I should reward that, or you think I should punish it?"

"Second one," always, if he's offered the choice. "Punish me. Pretty please." That earns him a big hungry wolf smile, and a sloppy kiss to the cheek, prepping his skin, wetting it further so it'll really sting.

And _god_ —his head twists to the side with the impact—mission accomplished on that one.

"All one side," Steve says after that first crisply hot smack to his left cheek, and Bucky should be better behaved than to frown, but he does, and doesn't get away with it. " _Hey._ This a punishment or isn't it? What'd you just say to me?"

"I—'Punish me. Pretty please.'"

"That's right." Steve kisses him on the forehead like _goodnight_. "So unless you change your answer: all one side."

He doesn't change his answer.

But maybe he should have chosen his words more carefully, or clarified that there had been no single quotation marks around the "pretty," no comma separating it from the "please," because after the sixth hit, Steve pauses and takes in Bucky's fiery face and says, "So pretty," and then, "Prettiest glare on earth," which deserves a more intense glare than Bucky's even capable of.

"Look who's talking, Mr. Sultry Smolder Cover of GQ." That issue, when he found it wrinkled and proudly displayed on the magazine racks of a library in Idaho, had reached a glossy fist inside him and dragged out the first non-hysterical laughter he could remember ever experiencing. No nervous overwhelming fear; this was just _funny_. A teenage girl with some enormous test prep guide on the table in front of her shushed him.

"You, without permission. Cut that out."

"Sorry, Steve." A single _crack-_ ing slap to his untouched right cheek rewards his apology, gets him reeling and wanting. Not wanting anything in particular. More hits, a bite, a kiss, a hug, a rough hand around his half-full cock, to be lifted in Steve's arms or shoved hard onto the tile. A skin-tight Starfleet Uniform constricting his breathing and Steve in evil alien prosthetic makeup. Those would all be nice, yeah. But mostly he _wants_ , verb with no accompanying object.

Each strike of Steve's hand scatters fire ants across his face; it's purely surface, purely sharp. In contrast, he feels himself blurring. He's a reflection gone rippled in the the surface of a pond that's just had stone after stone skipped across. "Mm," he says, and Steve says, "Yeah," sounding rippled too.

The hand that's been slacking off around his ponytail yanks at the same moment Steve's hand smacks down the hardest, a more precise sting than the reawakened sting in his scalp, and this time Bucky says, "Uff," but means the same thing he meant when he said, "Mm."

Probably meaning the same thing he meant when he said, "Yeah," Steve says, "You learned your lesson, Buck." Instead of hitting him, he presses his hand to Bucky's smarting cheek, thumb rolling one eyelid shut like closing a windowshade, tip of his ring finger nestling in the intertragic notch of Bucky's ear.

Something in Bucky goes beyond tender at how it fits there, at the thought of this one tiny part of his body cradling one tiny part of Steve, holding him safely, and he surges up for a kiss. The grip on his hair stays brutal, so he winces with the movement, but who gives a shit? His sloppy kiss gets all over Steve's smiling lips.

Then he catches up, really hears the period in what Steve said as opposed to a question mark and says, "Oh. I did? Thank you. 'M sorry."

"Oh yeah?"

"Of course. I'll be sure to give you at _least_ 20% less lip next time."

"Next time what?"

"Next _time_ , Cap'n. I don't fucking know, Steve. Next PowerPoint?"

“Sure. Next PowerPoint, you don't give me 21% less lip, I'm dragging you right back in here. And I won't be so nice."  A bite in his voice leaves the same burning imprint on Bucky's spine that a bite from Steve's mouth might leave on his neck. He plans to hold Steve to that. Next PowerPoint, and holy cow, that's a good thought.

"You? The nicest man I know?"

It wasn't a joke, but Steve laughs. "Sure." No more pull in Bucky's scalp. Petting instead, and Bucky leans into it gratefully. "Someone’s looking sleepy.”

“Mm-hmm. My room, right? You don’t seem very ready to bed down.”

“Yeah, that sounds right. Mind if I escort you?”

“Yeah. Make sure I don’t get lost.” He yawns. “In case of evil wolves lurking, wanting to steal my grandma basket.” He takes his hair out of its ponytail, so it falls in damp waves. Snags the elastic around his wrist.

Face rubbery with his own yawn, Steve slips a thumb beneath the elastic and steals it right off Bucky’s wrist. The yawn trails off into a mumbled, “‘Grandma basket?’” that Bucky ignores.

“Hey. That’s mine.”

“Hey,” Steve says, and pokes him in the nose. “ _That’s_ mine.”

“My nose?” But he knows.

“Sure. Got your nose." Knuckles squeeze his nostrils shut in one brief affectionate move. "Here. Like this.” He feeds the elastic partway into Bucky’s mouth, and nudges his jaw shut so his teeth clamp it in place. “And then I do this.” Two fingers hook into the loop of elastic hanging out of Bucky’s mouth like the ring on a collar. “And then we—”He gives a tiny tug forward, and Bucky’s head follows. “Upright, I think,” he says after studying Bucky a moment, and the next tug, Bucky stands. “Nice little bridle here, and you're too short to be a horse when you’re crawling.”

Bucky snorts, which is admittedly pretty equine of him. Goes with it by stomping his foot like a hoof.

"That's the spirit. C'mon."

Out the door, turning down the hall, Bucky remembering at the last second to reach back and slam the light switch off, Steve makes clicking noises with his tongue, slow and measured, more soothing than hooves on cobblestones.

Bucky misjudges his ability to keep the elastic secure between his teeth when he says, " _Whu_ ah oo _doing_?" Steve grunts and picks it off the floor, puts it back in place.

"Be more careful." A harder tug, like a test. The elastic holds fast. Their walk resumes.

"'Orry." He's gotta be more gutteral. " _What_ are you dur-ing wit your mout?"  

"I'm encouraging you. What does it sound like?" _Click click. Click click._ "Come on, boy! Good Bucky!"

"I don't fear-al en-cour-edge-deh."

"Of course you do!" The tongue clicking speeds up, and Steve pulls harder. Too hard this time. He snaps the elastic right out of its circle-hood. Wormy wet black fabric dangles from where Bucky's clenching his teeth on a bit of it.

Teeth shut tight, Bucky shakes with trapped laughter, and Steve's, "Oh, shut _up_ , asshole," turns into an ugly snort. "Yeah, yeah, fine."

He grabs Bucky's hand instead and pulls him the remaining couple yards to his bedroom door. Bucky's happy to be pulled. Happy to be not pulled anymore. Happy to have one of Steve's hands in his and the other one, huge and heavy and hot, spanning his naked hip, holding him in place just by existing there, not even threatening to dig fingers into flesh.

There's a moment before Steve notices the broken elastic still hanging from between Bucky's lips like a strand of goth spaghetti, when his face moves like he's about to have fun telling Bucky off some more for laughing. But he pauses before he can say anything besides, "Buck," and his face collapses into something softer. His thumb comes up to cover the elastic, to flatten it against Bucky's chin, while the rest of his fingers wrap around the side of Bucky's throat. Heel of his palm sits in the hollow. That almost-pressure and the inescapable reminder of his own pulse get Bucky standing straighter.

Steve's intense gaze on him: that too. Makes him wanna stand straighter and taller than physically possible at the same time as making him wanna curl up on the ground at Steve's feet, and always has.

Steve kisses him around his own thumb. Bucky kisses back, lips and thumb both, and Steve removes the elastic, stuffs it in his back pocket. Gifts another kiss to right above Bucky's ear and mutters, " _Very_ okay boy." The noise Bucky makes sounds like it didn't even come from him. Like it's its own small animal. Shushing sounds in his ear and another kiss. "Most okay I know."

With a grunt and a grasp for what dignity he's got left, Bucky manages to say, “Next you’re gonna be feeding me sugar cubes.”

“Nah." Steve pulls back so they can look each other in the face. "Why would I be that nice?”

“Arsenic cubes, maybe.”

“I’ll put it on the shopping list.” Then he's clapping imaginary dust off his hands and saying, “Anyway, I escorted you! Goodnight.” With his thumb gone, the broken elastic's fallen to the floor.

Bucky grabs his wrist as gently as possible. A shadow of a grab, tea-party-polite. “Hey. Come on,” he begs, extra nasal on purpose. “Tuck me in? Tell me a story?.”

“Ugh. If you’re gonna whine about it.”

“I am. I’m sorry. I don’t know another way.”

Steve puts on a show of looming, of backing Bucky threateningly into the room even as very polite metal fingers stay around his wrist. Big shoulders and puffed-up chest and a failed attempt at a frown. He says, 'Once upon a time, there was a pain in my ass."

"Hey, that's my line!"

With his free hand, Steve shoves at Bucky's shoulder, and laughs and says, "You tell me the fucking story then, Buck," and Bucky tugs a little less polite on Steve's wrist until his ass hits the table and he backs up more, sitting, pulling Steve between the vee of his legs, and he's good.

He does everything he can to be good, still telling the story even as his voice slurs and his eyelids threaten to drop like anvils dangling high up in the cartoon air. His body curls around Steve's much less sleepy body on the table, and Steve keeps saying, "And then what?" even as Bucky's slipping into dreams.

 

 

 

-

 

 

Where Steve promised to plunk down a bowl of raisin bran, he plunks down the I LIKE IKE button, white-out, and a chisel-tipped Sharpie.

Bucky sighs. “These bougie restaurants and their miniscule portion sizes. What’s the world coming to?”

The world’s coming to Steve cuffing him on the back of the head, and doing a shoddy job burying his laughter beneath, “Hey, your fault you woke up so early and gave me extra time to work with.”

“ _Oh, Bucky, I’ll fix you breakfast. Sit down and let me_ dote _on you._ You’re a filthy liar. I should have known.”

“You haven’t had coffee and we don’t have _that_ much time, but do you want me to remember later that you were this much of a smartass this morning?”

“Mm. Maybe? Ask again later but probably, please.”

“Maybe this is your breakfast. Maybe I’m gonna pry open your mouth and write ‘ingrate’ on your tongue, huh?”

“Promise?”

“Maybe. Later. When I’m remembering you were a smartass. You know what I want you to do with these.”

“I do. Just. Thought you were gonna do it.” It's been a few days. He's been breathless waiting.

“And _that’s_ why I never let you think. No. You’re writing it, Buck.”

“You want me to write—”

“That you tolerate yourself, yeah.” A kiss to the part in his hair. Whispered close to his scalp, “Be good and I’ll slice up strawberries for your cereal too,” unwinds some of the anxiety that’s been coiled tight behind his eyes since he woke up.

He twists around, nose almost slamming into the vulnerable hollow of Steve’s throat. Less than graceful. If he had a nose like Steve’s, that could have ended in a puncture wound. But Steve jerks back in time. Amused surprise holds his lips barely apart, like a coat caught in the closing train doors, and like those train doors, his mouth springs opens wider, but Bucky cuts him off with, “We have strawberries?”

“We will if you do what I tell you. Got a magic delivery guy on hold. All I gotta do is snap my fingers. Presto.” He pokes the center of Bucky’s nose. Bucky goes cross-eyed. “Strawberry fields forever.”

“You don’t like that song.” Today could be the day he woke up transformed into a sloth—not like he was able to bear looking in a mirror this morning to disprove that theory—so he pokes his tongue out and tries to curl it up to reach Steve’s finger where it’s still squashing down his nose.

“You know I like anything useful. It was useful just now. You’ll be useful in a second—” His middle finger and thumb's ragged nails capture Bucky’s straining tongue. The pain of it’s like a couple seconds after banging his knee on his desk at work. Remnants of a shock. “—if you do what I tell you, and rewrite that button. Okay?” Bucky nods. “Verbally.”

The attempted _okay_ comes out like a not-bad, “Uh-huh." All of his captured face parts return to him, more or less uninjured, and he uncrosses his eyes. It’s cross your teas and _dot_ your eyes; he always gets that wrong. He tries to dot his eyes up at Steve’s smiling face. A calloused thumb strokes his cheekbone and he shifts to press the quickest kiss to its pad before letting it resume its business.

Stroking, Steve says, “You want me to handhold you through this, or work on breakfast?”

“Thought you can’t make breakfast if I haven’t been good yet.”

“Hey. Self-centered. I didn’t say _your_ breakfast. Which one?”

“I think. I can do it alone, Steve. I promise.” At least, he wants to try. Hard to say if he’ll manage, fragile as he woke up, startled early from a nightmare where his hands kept growing new fingers, and his face too, fingers all over, and let's not talk about who was standing next to him, poking and prodding, injecting mysterious fluids into the webbing between his million fingers, light reflecting off his little round—

But sometimes the solution to fragility is to risk further fragility, to throw himself full-tilt into vulnerability. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

And then out of the fire and into the world—the sidewalk, the traffic sounds, and other bodies—his skin will be shiny and brand new.

 

 

Sunrise not even starting yet, he found Steve snoozing on the couch, asleep with the belt pulled partially out of his jeans, fly undone and one sock off, but otherwise fully dressed, like he’d been hit over the head with a length of pipe in the middle of changing.

While Bucky was debating going and lying down on top of him, one of Steve’s eyes slit open, and he said, groggy, “Hey, sweetheart.” Held out his hand. And Bucky came and laid down on him, ear pressed to his slow heartbeat, one arm cradling Steve’s head, the other tucking a couple fingers into Steve’s belt loop.

After a moment, Steve whispered, “You wanna take it out?” and Bucky frowned and furrowed his brow, but nodded, pulling Steve’s belt all the way free.

“You up to that right now?” he asked, and Steve said, “Huh?” and Bucky said slowly, “Your. You know. Belt?”

“Oh.” Steve laughed, and took the folded belt when Bucky reached up behind himself to hand it to him. The belt and Steve’s hand rested heavy and reassuring on his back. It was nice, the thought of lying here like this in a happy smushed sandwich with their heartbeats as the filling, on the receiving end of a lazy morning whipping. But it seemed a bit sudden. Sand was still heavy on Steve’s eyelids.

“'Oh?'”

“Not beatin' you now, numbskull. Thought you might wanna—” The belt slid along his back, buckle jingling, and Bucky shivered. Then Steve brought it up between them, and gently stuck the loop of leather between Bucky’s teeth. “Chew toy.”

Bucky bit hard, obediently, grinning, and nodded. He rubbed his face against Steve’s neck a moment in gratitude, and Steve made a small noise, tickled by the brush of either leather or hair. This was good. He did need to sink his teeth into something. To be solid and real and capable of touching the world with anything other than goddamn _fingers_. To be silent on purpose instead of trying and failing to scream.

To drool on Steve’s shirt.

And even better, Steve pinched his nostrils shut, and for a second Bucky stopped trying to breathe, motionless all over, before switching tactics and attempting to suck in air around the leather. He whined. Something like fear but small and sweet as a butterscotch lodged in his throat, and when Steve released his nose, his eyes were damp and Steve’s eyes were crinkling at the corners and they were both smiling.

Steve kissed the top of his head. Fingertips prodded at the spitty corners of his mouth. Steve said, “My favorite pet I own,” and, well, that was all right. If he was the only pet Steve owned, then it didn’t mean anything really. A hundred percent nonsense.

Definitely didn't make him think, sappy beyond reason, that he'd suffer through a thousand years of finger-infestation nightmares if it meant he'd get to keep hearing Steve's voice shaped into those words.

 

 

Steve says, “I’m right here, idiot. You’re not alone no matter what. But I’ll pour myself some cornflakes if you like.”

“Please. Thanks.”

The bustling sounds of rifling through the cabinets. The icebox. Steamboat Willie whistled a stone-skip away from in-tune. And Bucky takes a deep breath, zooms in on his own task. Centers the I LIKE IKE in front of him.

He starts with the white-out. That’s how everything starts, with making a space. And he blows on the white lines to usher that space into permanence, checking periodically with his fingertip if the liquid’s still tacky until he’s deemed it acceptable and doesn’t have to twirl his hair around the fingers of his other hand in impatience any longer.

White-out stains his skin when he uncaps the Sharpie, an even stronger dizzying smell, and manages to get black ink on his thumb. Marking himself up all over. He hovers the marker above the button’s surface. Steve’s still whistling and still rifling, like this is the first time he’s ever been in their kitchen and also he’s an idiot who legitimately believes maybe they store cornflakes in the dishwasher.

To be fair, that _is_ where they store a hand ax and a few guns. Sufficient closet space is hard to come by in New York real estate, after all. Gotta be thrifty.

Maybe if he writes the words out of order. You'd think his assigned sentence would already be sufficiently absurd. It's several streets away from reality; that’s not even his actual name. That should be enough to ease the struggle of it.

But jumble the pieces, get all non-linear? He'd be writing nothing meaningful at all. Plopping each piece down at random until they just happened to form a particular sentence wouldn’t require _any_ kind of struggle.

But he woke up fragile; he needs to lean into fragile; good fragile, for-Steve fragile, the fire, so much more spacious and alive than the frying pan. So he begins properly, strugglingly, with _TOLERATE_ , squished in right after _I_.

He earns his fucking raisin bran, with whole milk and sliced organic strawberries from this special invisible delivery service Steve's got either a free trial or a membership with. He earns a kiss to his neck. And long legs in sweatpants using his lap as an ottoman, crossed and stretching from where Steve's pulled a chair close to his to gobble up his own cereal and peruse movie times in the paper, circling showings with the Sharpie that left its absentminded mark on Bucky's fingers and wrist and neck while he wrote. The same spot on his neck that Steve kissed (Steve told him so).

Their standards for movies are, first of all, how are the visuals? Good enough they would keep Steve from falling asleep without the pep pill of Bucky yammering away in his ear? Speaking of which, on the second hand, how intensely will it get Bucky yammering away in Steve's ear? For Bucky's benefit, sure, but also because Steve likes that, his popcorn breath and his nonsense and dissections and giggling and huffs. Always has.

Third of all: no CGI talking animals or Bucky might puke into his popcorn. That was a confusing and unpleasant lesson learned. Blood and guts and sex and shit—that's all harder to predict the okayness of. For both of them. They do what they can to play it by ear.

Down to a pool of milk, he lifts the bowl and slurps, and without looking up, Steve kicks at his hip and tuts. "Where're your manners, Buck?"

"In the milk. I'm trying to reabsorb them."

"Oh, in that case—" And Steve's leaning in, lending a helping hand to the bowl's bottom, guiding as it tips into Bucky's mouth. Milk down the hatch, and with it, the memory of a million whispered compliments, chloroforming his own damn self with his own damn overwhelming love. Big sack. Carried away like dangling from the mouth of a stork.

He sighs into the milk, and closes his eyes a moment. No more milk, and they right the bowl together. Set it aside. With a swipe of his thumb, Steve shaves off the remaining milk mustache. "Hey," he says.

"Yeah?"

"You got fifteen minutes. You need all that to get ready?"

He doesn't bother pretending not to be confident off the top of his head. "Nine and a half about."

"Good." The button's nudged toward him. "Put it on me."                                                                                                                                                                              

Bucky smiles his _Yes, of course, any time._ This is easier than writing out those words was. All it takes is scooting his chair closer until Steve's legs are bent at the knees—dangling off the side of Bucky's thighs like off a rooftop—and ducking in close to be absolutely sure he doesn't stab Steve as he slips the pin in and back out.

It feels like affixing a corsage to his prom date, if he'd grown up in the world of, what, _Gossip Girl? Dawson's Creek?_ He went on a two-month binge of television high school dramas that left him mildly allergic for a year, and the images all stuck hard. His own prom, he has faint memories of crepe paper, basketball court lines on the floor, girls in pretty but practical dresses. Steve can't corroborate any of this because, "Nah, I didn't go," even though he said, five minutes before that, "You were the handsomest guy there, obviously." Idiot.

Point is, what's a tuxedo got that Steve's stretched-out Betty Boop sweatshirt's lacking?

He kisses the button when it's affixed, right over the _I_. That part's beloved, now that the pronoun's switched identities. Steve takes the opportunity to hold him in place with a  hand around his neck and pepper the back of his head with kisses until Bucky's squirming and laughing.

Freed, he smiles big and overwhelmed at Steve and, hell, he's still got time. Enough. Might have to shave a minute off his getting ready, ask Steve to get his shoes for him or something, but Steve will be happy to oblige.

He flicks the Sharpie so it rolls closer to Steve and says, "Could you—" He sticks his tongue out like a frog that saw a juicy fly.

Steve squints. "Say please."

" _Please_ put toxic ink on my tongue, Steve? Please write me a love letter, honey? Darling? Love of my life?"

"How could I say no to that ugly mug? Anything specific?"

"Oh. Uh." He hadn't thought that far. "Y'know, dunce? Nitwit? Hole? I dunno. Let the spirit move you."

"Hmm. Okay. I've got an idea along those lines." He uncaps the Sharpie and holds it like a knife. Raises an eyebrow. "Show me."

That's one of his favorite Steve orders, no matter what it means at any given time. Show Steve his tongue, his dick, his asshole, his tears, the cover of the book he's reading, what he's doodling on a napkin, whatever he's afraid of, whatever he wants. And Steve will give him whatever he wants, once he's seen the shape of it. However he can.

The Sharpie's, well, sharp on his tongue as always. Wet and bitter, startling. Steve's eyes are sharp on his tongue, as always, and Bucky's cross-eyed as always trying to watch, even knowing it's fruitless, and needless when he can feel the shape of the love letter inked for him anyway.

And of course. Of course that's what Steve thinks of as "something along the lines of" _hole_ or _nitwit_ or _dunce._ Of course he draws a fucking heart.

 

 

 

-

 

 

Steve’s new accessory goes with everything. At least, he seems to think so. It's there when Bucky wakes up. It's there when he goes to sleep. He catches Steve coming home from a run one morning, and barely across the front door's threshold, he's already pulling the button out of the neon floral fanny pack that Bucky bought him as a joke and pinning it to his sweaty tank. Every moment they're home together, Steve advertises how he feels. Makes sure Bucky and all of their roommates—the floor lamp, the coffee maker, the Pac Man machine—know that he tolerates Dwight Eisenhower Doghouses.

And minimum three times a day, Steve will call Bucky Ike. _Ike, your dinner's getting cold. Ike, your ass is getting cold; I should really heat it up for you. Ike, have you seen my phone anywhere?_ To make sure no one forgets what the button's really saying.

Minimum three times a day, Bucky kisses that Sharpied "I."

They're about to leave for the farmer's market when Bucky realizes the button's displayed proudly on the chest pocket of Steve's denim jacket. His eyes go wide and probably cross too.

His mouth sticks open and his hand sticks in the motion of turning the doorknob.

The sound Steve makes is considering. Not at all surprised or like he's confused about what's got Bucky riled up. When Bucky's eyes flick up from the button to Steve's face, the corner of his mouth twitches. Asshole.

Not that Bucky understands his own reaction. The spit pooling in his mouth and how his heart's going faster, almost a normal person's resting rate. Those words don't _mean_ anything to anyone who's not them. _Steve's_ the only one who's gonna look dumb here.

But?

But Steve laughs and says, "I'm fucking with you," warm-voiced, and unpins the button, moving it to the lining of his jacket instead. Far inside, where there's no risk he'll flash it at anyone like a risque ankle when he stretches to grab a sweet dumpling squash or jar of local honey. They're the only ones who know what it means _and_ the only ones who know that it's there, and now all Bucky wants is to spend the whole walk with his hand shoved up inside Steve's jacket, touching the thing. Grounding himself.

He says, "Yeah," and Steve kisses him on the cheek.

"Open the door, Doghouses. We got rabbit food to buy you, huh?" Because Steve always keeps him fed. Fed and watered and properly medicated. Everything he needs to have inside him, Steve will always make sure he's got it in there, no matter what. Breath and a beating heart and the warmth suffusing his insides, spreading out from his stomach, as he opens the door.

And sometimes a fist or hairbrush handle. A guy's got needs.

 

 

 

-

 

 

His first day back at work after vacation, Bucky came home to Steve grabbing him by the hand and yanking him down the hallway, practically bouncing up and down. Giggling, he asked Steve where was the fire at, and Steve said, “I’m _taking_ you there. Come on, Firefighter Bucky. Just kidding. They don’t let things as dumb and weak as you be firefighters.”

“I’ll be the dalmatian.”

“You don’t have the training to be a firehouse dalmatian.”

“I’ll take night classes. We’ll make this work.”

The door stood a sliver short of closed, and when Steve put a hand on the knob, his energy didn’t so much dissipate as change states. Shifted from a solid rubber ball bouncing around inside his body to some dense wet muck, and he was mired in it, scrabbling to escape.

“It’s not—” He cleared his throat. “It’s not an order or anything. But since it worked at the cabin I thought, well. We could try it here too.”

“Steve.” He gestured toward the room with his head, and squeezed Steve’s hand. “As far as I know, no one died. Lighten up a little. You noticed by now I generally like when you give me things?”

“Who said I’m giving you anything?”

“It was subtextual, asshole. Come on. Open the door before I start thinking the surprise is a rotting corpse.”

“Oh.” Steve frowned and took his hand off the knob. “Second thought, Buck: I’ve got something I need to return to the graveya—the store. The normal, real store. Where all the salespeople are alive.”

“Fucking hell.” Bucky shoved the door open while distracting Steve with a kiss. Distracting him by laughing into his mouth, anyway.

And Steve actually _whined_ when he realized the door was open, but Bucky could be the bigger guy here and not point it out.

After all, he was suddenly feeling extra eager to give Steve anything he could possibly ask for, confronted with the sight of a big slab of wood covering half of the mattress. Bucky breathed, "Oh," and strode closer, to stand over the wood, to touch it with both hands. It was thick, sturdy, sanded down, and he couldn't see exactly how Steve had secured it to the bedframe, but it didn't move at all when nudged.

Next to him, Steve babbled. “This can just be a prototype. I know I should’ve asked you about size, and kind of wood. I got overzealous, but I tried to match your bed. If you want something else, we can take a shopping trip. If you want to. You can also just say no. If it’s a bad idea altogether that’s—”

“ _Steve_.”

“It’s a bad idea?” His face went through the five stages of grief all at once, ending in him nodding with a set jaw. Luckily, Bucky had practice delivering to Steve the good news that something he mourned had never died in the first place.

“Let me get a fucking word in edgewise, would you?” Taking Steve’s hand like he was a starlet exiting her limo at the red carpet and Steve was his chauffeur, he hoisted himself onto the wood. Lied flat, spread as he normally would, and closed his eyes. Got comfy. The pillow on his side had even been swapped out for the memory foam kind he liked. Those words always made Steve complain, _Pillows don't have brains_ , and Bucky liked to answer, _Yeah, well neither do we, Scarecrow_. “Yeah. I think—” He tugged on the hand he was holding. “Now you get in.”

“You’re saying it’s a good idea.”

“I’m _saying_ get in the bed. I’m _meaning_ it’s a good idea.”

He opened his eyes to the sight of Steve clambering over him. Kneeing him in the stomach on the way, just hard enough that Bucky startled and _Oofed._ “Hey!”

“That’s for bossing me around. Bad dog.” Settling on his side, he pinched Bucky’s cheek. “That's for that too.”

“Yeah, yeah, my deepest apologies.” He reached up and laced his fingers together with the hand that had pinched him. Now he was holding both Steve’s hands, and he squeezed both. “Me being so impolite when you got me such a nice gift.”

“Really?” He heard Steve swallow. “You like it?”

“I mean, I’ll get back to you on if it needs to just be a prototype, but yeah, I like it, doofus. I like you. Thank you.”

“Yeah, I maybe like you too. Just a little. Against all expert advice.”

“Gee golly, mister, really? For true?”

“Shut _up.”_ Laughing, Steve almost let go of one of Bucky’s hands, but stopped himself, clinging harder. In an impressive feat of wild animal athleticism, he used his teeth to grab a pillow. Then he used his teeth and whole face to pretend to try to smother Bucky to death while his attempted murder victim spit out massive globs of laughter and caught the pillowcase between his own teeth too, a kind of long-distance kiss.

 

 

They don’t sleep that way every night. Not even most. If he can’t count on Steve not getting up and slipping away to pace and do push-ups and pound his face into a book and draw up plans—for whatever, who knows—all night, then sleeping in Steve’s bed holds no appeal. More than that; it puts him on edge, that huge empty expanse of mattress, and him so small in comparison. In the dark, it’s like being inside some massive prehistoric animal’s stomach, waiting to be digested.

With the lights on, it just feels kind of pathetic.

The first time he woke up gasping from a nightmare on that slab and Steve wasn’t there, the whole room seemed to pulse with his own blood until the toilet flushed in the distance, and Steve was back in a moment, and let Bucky hold him and whisper with him about inane shit until breathing returned to automatic, and he had enough wherewithal to cram the remaining nightmare images into a suitcase at the back of his brain. Latches snapped tight against the straining contents. They’d escape again later, but not that night.

The second time, the bed was empty and stayed empty for twenty-four minutes of gazing wide-eyed at the glowing clock face and mouthing, _Tick tick tick tick tick_. When he finally got himself together to go looking, Steve was in the armchair in the living room, reading the paper. He took in the sight of Bucky standing there with both hands fisted in his hair, not blinking or breathing as often as he knew he should be.

Steve paused and looked him over like reading the instructions on a microwave meal, and then said, hushed, “Hey, come here,” which was in fact exactly what the fine print on Bucky’s body with its frozen insides said he should do.

It’s ridiculous, how shit from '44 can fuck him up an entirely different way now than it did at the time. Like how a Hershey bar will get all speckled-white with separated fats if you leave it too long in the icebox. His brain was left too long freezing, and all the malfunctions that had been there pre-cryo started speckling and separating, turning unrecognizable by the time he had the wherewithal to unwrap himself and get a good look at the chemical-candy inside.

In the war, if he’d had to sleep on a table, he probably would have vomited. Bedrolls and cots were acceptable, if not ideal; he relished every chance they got to stay in a hotel or safehouse and sleep on a real mattress.

But now—he sleeps on a table and a thorny place in him is soothed thinking, _I’m still alive_ , _and_ _someone’s gonna come save me soon._

What turns his stomach, on the other hand, is a sort of sense memory of something that had only been in his head. Because all that time lying there on that first table, he’d fantasized about being dead and buried, and the dirt, his grave, how he imagined it? Would be soft and expansive as a king-size featherbed.

So probably it’s a good sign that he wants nothing to do with that soft kind of sleep. Means he wants to be alive and all that bullshit.

This, though. This terror, waking up alone in Steve’s bed—There’s no single justification he can think of, no positive spin, why it would be so much worse than waking alone and gasping on his table, in his bedroom, in a nightmare’s wake. It’s just worse. It just hurts.

He obeyed Steve's _Come here_ , came to him and got on his knees in front of the chair. Touched his forehead to Steve's knee and took a shaky breath before looking up at him. Strawberry blond stubble dusted his face, more than when they'd gone to bed, it seemed. An eyelash clung to his cheekbone, and Bucky wanted to reach up and pick it off, but couldn't bring himself to right now.

Steve, though, touched him confidently. Calmly. Cupped the back of his skull with one hand and held him still like that for a moment before starting to pet. Long, firm strokes, and that shift was like asking, as was the way he tilted his head to the side.

Bucky muttered, "I just. I don't know if I have insides. Alive insides."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. My blood's in the wrong place, or wrong state. Not—I don't mean Louisianna or something. Congealed. Or—You ever worry I'm." Steve raised an eyebrow. "This is going to sound really stupid."

"Buck. Sweetheart. You know I love when you sound stupid. All right?"

Bucky's eyelids fell closed with relief, and he dropped a kiss to Steve's knee. The hair petting transitioned—not smoothly, but it didn't need to be smoothly—into braiding. An off-center French braid. Nothing intended for the outside world's consumption. "You ever worry I'm a wax figure? Of myself?"

"Mm." It was hard to say if Steve was putting on a show of pretending to consider or really needed a moment to respond. "I gotta say, nope. Never thought of that one."

The tug of one braid section crossing the other flipped a switch. Not the main switch from crazy to not crazy, but a switch that mattered. It was like a spotlight turned on above Steve, throwing every tired crease of his face into unflattering light for Bucky's guilty conscience to drink in. "Shit, sorry."

"Why?"

"You're awake too. You're—Did you need—"

"I'm fine, Buck. I'm fine enough. You don't apologize for coming first in the triage. Got that?"

"Yeah, 'Who's Craziest?' Triage. My favorite party game."

"And you're winning by a landslide right now, pal."

"Bully for fucking me."

"That's right." And he didn't even say, _I'm the bully for fucking you_ , and that's the only way Bucky could tell he must be seriously worrying. "How's your blood doing? In the right state or in Louisiana?" Bucky frowned and shook his head. "Let me try something?"

"Any time. Love when you do science."

"Yeah, I know, buddy."

The hand not braiding his hair came up to wrap around the side of his neck, covering the carotid with the middle of the palm. Steve's fingers were hot at Bucky's nape. They didn't squeeze, didn't try to make him a lion cub in its mother's mouth, airborne, because this wasn't about the fingers. This was about the palm, about the pulse. That much was clear when Steve's other hand stopped mid-braid, leaving Bucky's hair _really_ not fit for public consumption, and moved to cover Bucky's heart.

"Gotta say," Steve said, and kissed Bucky's forehead, "don't feel like much of a wax sculpture to me."

"You spend much time groping wax sculptures?"

"Hey, don't pry. My masturbatory aides are my own business."

Bucky snorted. "I hate you. Yeah." He closed his eyes and leaned into both touches. Tried to give Steve more access to his neck, more access to his heart. With the neck, okay, increasing pressure would have been an issue because even the enhanced human body was a cruel joke, but the hand over his heart at least responded in kind. Pushed harder, firmer. Met him where he was, or where he was hoping to be.

And Steve was counting beats. Not aloud. But when Bucky slit his eyes open, Steve's lips were mouthing the numbers. Bucky said, "Counting jellybeans?"

"Nah. Not congealed, Buck. I got the proof here."

“Yeah," he sighed, "you do. Two proofs. Wish you had more hands.”

Steve inhaled through his nose the particular way he tended to when he thought he was about to say something earthshattering, such as, “A hand’s just any body part you say is a hand, right?”

The earth didn't shatter, but Bucky did laugh. “No.”

“Wrong answer. Don’t contradict me, okay? Be good.” Maybe he couldn't be alive or real, but he could be good, or try.

“Okay. Sure, Steve. Your elbow, your dick, your nose, every strand of hair, all hands, huh?”

“That’s right. As long as we say they are. Here, lie down for me. Here I come.”

It was totally unnecessary, how Steve was careful to keep his hands where they were on Bucky's neck and chest even as they maneuvered themselves downward. Unnecessary, but not un-nice. Until Bucky was lying supine, body slightly less tense than a tripwire, and Steve was next to him, rolled onto his left side. And Steve took his hand off of Bucky's chest for a moment, only to settle his head in its place. Now his ear could keep listen over Bucky's blood.

The hand moved to circle Bucky's wrist instead. Steve nodded decisively, cheek fucking up the fabric of Bucky's shirt some, very official. Doctor's opinion: not a wax sculpture. Three pieces of proof right there. Steve said, "This better?"

“Better." He wormed his left hand between them to give a little wave in what he hoped was Steve's eyeline. "Good thing I don’t got another pesky pulse on this one, huh?”

“Hmm. I better kiss it just to be sure.”

“Dummy.” The reprimand he got for that was _three_ sloppy kisses to a bloodless wrist. And a nip from Steve's teeth, like it was possible for that to hurt him when probably it hurt Steve.

They stayed like that a long time. Maybe a long time. It was hard to tell, because Bucky wasn't counting heartbeats; that was Steve's job.

Except then Steve was asleep. But that was Steve's job the most, in Bucky's opinion: letting himself have what he needed. Sleep overrode keeping track of time and blood so Bucky didn't have to. It was a sweet sight, the near-imperceptible rise and fall of a hulking shoulder in a tight t-shirt, and Bucky wanted to slide himself out from under all that bulk to get Steve a blanket, a pillow, maybe pillows and blankets for both of them to camp out on the floor. They should try that more, he thought. Could get a machine to project constellations onto the ceiling, and they'd make up what the constellations were and drink hot cocoa.

That was ambitious. Right now: blankets.

Normally Steve slept hard when he did sleep, but he didn't account for how Steve's hand around his wrist was maybe like an arm around a teddy bear, and the sudden absence of Bucky in his grip made him startle awake. Bolting up straight, wide-eyed, ready for who knew the hell what, before a couple blinks and he settled and squinted at Bucky. Rubbed a hand over his eyes.

“Shit. Sorry, Buck. I didn’t—”

“Don’t apologize. Come to my bed.” Now Bucky sat up too, pretzeling his legs, offering Steve his wrist to hold again, and his offer was accepted automatically.

“Yours?”

“I don’t know. You think you’re gonna stay asleep the rest of the night?”

“Looks like it, honestly.”

“Then—" He wanted to say _yours_ , felt like he should be able to say _yours_. But the most comforting thing he could imagine was curling around Steve on the tight confines of his table, with its emoji bedsheets and the green and white quilt that's mostly for Steve, both of them watched over by a friendly arcade game. "Mine, actually, yeah. That okay? It can be yours if—"

"That's just fine, Buck. Your bed. Let's go." He started to stand, but when Bucky didn't come immediately, stayed stuck in a weird crouch that would be funny if Bucky weren't trying to communicate. Clearly and carefully.

"And," he said, tugging for Steve to sit down instead of crouching. "In the future, I think—You wake up in the middle of the night, wake me up? Take me to the couch or to my bed or whichever. Tuck me in. Just don’t leave me in there. And if you _know_ you’re gonna get up and leave. Don’t bring me in there at all.”

“I’m—Yeah. Sure. Should I apologize for this one?”

“No. I didn’t know. How the fuck are you gonna know? Endless fucking surprises from this brain here, huh?” He tapped his temple. Steve tapped it too. Kissed the place they'd tapped, double-clicked and double-clicked, tried furiously to open.

“Yeah. But mostly in a good way.”

“God. You too, honey.” The eyelash still clung to Steve's cheekbone. Bucky extended his tongue, made Steve squawk at the wetness, swallowed the eyelash up. "Okay. Let's go."

 

 

Still, with startling frequency these days, Bucky will say, “It’s time for me to go to bed,” and Steve will say something stupid like, “There’s a vacancy in mine, you’re interested,” and do something that expresses finality, like stop reading the Arts section of the paper and drape it open over the couch back, marking his place.

“What happened to the last tenant?” Bucky folds up his own section of the paper, unfinished crossword on top with an all-caps note to himself scrawled next to it, telling him to finish tomorrow.

“Oh, I don’t like to talk about that. Ignore any bloodstains you might see.”

“Come stains too?”

“ _No_. I’m not a fucking animal.”

“It okay that I am?”

“Well.” He stretches like a yawn with no pretense of yawning. “No 'no pets' clause on the lease. I think we can swing that.”

“Oh, good. I’d hate to get you evicted.”

"Can't be evicted. I'm a protected national landmark."

"Protected national landmarks are allowed to break contracts?" He wraps an arm around a newly standing Steve's waist and mouths at his shoulder. "I gotta get in on this game."

Steve leads the way down the hall, Bucky still plastered to his side. "Protected national landmarks don't get nice things like pierced ears and beatings with the whisk, so think carefully."

Bucky does _really_ like their new whisk, and by the time they've both changed and brushed their teeth and are snug in bed with their books, he's concluded that the ability to legally break contracts isn't worth it. Unlawful breaking is perfectly fine with him if necessary.

Steve says, "Well, if the police come asking, I promise to say I haven't seen you in years. I'll give myself amnesia back to 2013 so I actually believe it's true, even. That's called method acting," and then as Bucky's cackling he says, "Oh!" and leaps up to go digging in the laundry hamper. He emerges with the button, snagged off today's t-shirt, and affixes it to his pajama leg before returning to bed with a relieved sigh.

Bucky raises his eyebrows, but Steve doesn't look his way. _Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism_ has got his full attention, or that's the fiction he's spinning for Bucky to buy.

No sale. “You shouldn’t sleep with that.”

“Oh, no." Still doesn't look up. Hot wars and media populism are _clearly_ riveting. "I’m not letting you get away with being in a room with me while I’m not wearing this.”

“It’ll probably spring open and stab you. I’m gonna wake up and blood’s spurting out of your femoral artery. It’s gonna get on my pajamas.”

“So take off your pajamas.” For that, he's willing to put the book down. He helps get everything started, easing the floral flannel pants down a couple inches, exposing the pale tops of Bucky's thighs, and Bucky works on wriggling the rest of the way out of his clothes. Briefs too, when Steve shoots his crotch a pointed look and says, "You got something to hide?" He gives Bucky's limp, exposed dick a quick approving fondle, so Bucky's caught mid-shiver when Steve argues, “Anyway. The pin’s not that strong.”

“Neither’s your artery.”

“Yes, it is. I have scientifically strong arteries. Shut up!” He slaps a hand over Bucky’s mouth, but Bucky keeps shaking with laughter. “You don’t set dress codes around here. That’s my job.”

Bucky kisses the palm gagging him, and Steve pops him lightly on the mouth, catching the tip of his nose too, before running his fingers through Bucky’s hair. Bucky says, “I’m not telling you what to do. I’m giving you common sense advice here.”

“I barely even move in my sleep. It’s not gonna break. No more advice outta you.”

“Your funeral. Want I should start working on your eulogy now?”

“Sure, sweetheart. Tell me my eulogy. Sounds like a great bedtime story.”

“You’re a twisted freak. Okay." Bucky clears his throat, not even needing a moment to think. "Here lies my dumbass husband. I’ve been told he’s a national icon, but I bet he just made that up to impress me. You know, when we were eight, he claimed to be the heir to a cotton candy factory. Being an even bigger idiot, I actually believed him for three whole days. Three whole days of planning what we were gonna do with our cotton candy fortune when he inherited it. It all came crumbling down when—”

Steve stuffs three fingers in his mouth to gag him, and Bucky grins around them and sucks. In Morse, he blinks up at Steve, _You can’t silence the truth._

Steve says, “Watch me,” and kisses him on the forehead. And then goes back to his book, and Bucky's chest hurts in a nice way, watching him fall into it fully, for real, and he falls into his own book, curled on his side on his wooden slab. He's alive and there's a nice guy right next to him willing to save him. To lie to the police when they come knocking, to remove his pajamas so they don't get blood-stained, to grope behind himself until he finds Bucky's hand, and laces their fingers together, and holds tight.

 

 

The first two nights they sleep in there with I TOLERATE DWIGHT EISENHOWER DOGHOUSES pinned to Steve’s pajama pants, Steve’s right. They wake up. The pin’s whole and in place. Steve gloats, and puts his hand around the back of Bucky’s head to draw him close, to kiss him. Bucky leans down to kiss the unbroken button on Steve’s thigh first.

But then—

“Hey, I’m not gonna say I told you so. It’s an ugly sentence.”

“Good, thanks.” Steve's still fishing around in the covers for the pin part of the button. The button part of the button was perfectly positioned under his open mouth when they woke up. Drool gleamed on top of "Doghouses" and Bucky's heart hiccupped gratefully at the sight, at the drool on the sheets too, and the crust in the corners of Steve's eyes, and how one of his hands had shoved under his own shirt in the night so he was cupping his pec like it might fall right off if he didn't.

Stupid asleep Steve didn't know how bodies worked. Not that stupid awake Steve knows much better.

Bucky says, “But I did _tell_ you.”

“Buck, that still counts.”

“No, it doesn’t. It sounds different _and_ the sentiment’s different. A little bit.”

“ _No._ If you’re still you without an arm, then ‘I told you so’ is still ‘I told you so,’ without a ‘so.’”

“That’s—That’s got the least relationship to how the world works of _anything_ you’ve ever said.”

Huffing, Steve abandons his search. “No. I’m right. Say I’m right.”

“Fine. You’re inverse right—”

“Don’t call me an invert!”

Bucky talks louder, “As I was _saying._ With _your_ logic, but if _I’m_ right _,_ then ‘I told you so’ isn’t ‘I told you so’ without the ‘so,’ and I’m _not_ me, actually, without that arm. I tricked you. There is no James Buchanan Barnes. I am only—” He plucks the button out of Steve’s hand and holds it up in front of his own forehead— “Dwight Eisenhower Doghouses. An entirely different man. Checkmate.”

"Bucky." A long-suffering sigh. "Sweetheart. I am going to punch you in the face.”

“It’s mean to promise me stuff you’re not gonna do.”

“No, really, I am. See?” In seconds and with _Oof_ s out of both of them, Bucky goes from sitting up in a mess of sheets and quilt on his side of the bed to face-planted in Steve's pillows, ass in the air, with the button now clutched in his fist, his fingers having curled protective over it in response to the manhandling. There's a warm arm under his stomach, hand wrapping around to grip his hip, and a chin jabbing him between the shoulder blades. Low laughter in his ear and then Steve's fist collides with the meat of his ass.

Not as hard as he might hit if he were trying to start something, planning to slide the hand on Bucky's stomach lower and put off breakfast for a while; this won't bruise at all. Still Bucky's mouth falls open and his gut feels tight and set aflame, as pain in the mountain-range shape of Steve's knuckles travels deep into his muscle and makes itself at home in him.

Steve follows it up by gently rapping on Bucky's ass cheek with his knuckles, like knocking to be let into that home. It's a weird massage, vibrating his ass, and does nothing to make him less aroused, and he squirms as best he can while still staying where Steve put him.

Then his just-woke-up brain catches up, and he shrieks, delighted. "That's not my face," is muffled meaningless by pillows, but Steve's a gentleman, and rolls him onto his side. Pushes away the small country's worth of hair that got in Bucky's face and tucks it behind his ear for him.

"What's that, Buck?"

"That's _not_ my face."

“It’s not?” Steve looks back and forth between Bucky’s ass and face, squinting. “You’ll have to forgive me for not being able to tell the difference.”

"Gee, I like you." He likes Steve's creased face, and how he's clearly barely resisting the impulse to grin at his own joke, and how he slept on his hair wet against all expert (Bucky's) advice so half of it's sticking straight out. He likes how he's sitting on the wood slab but with his feet on the soft side of the bed, one tucked under Bucky's ass, knees up and splayed.

He likes the hand that punched him, still curled in a loose fist. There's a lot to like here, so he levers himself up with his arms behind him and kisses Steve's cheek.

The disgusted noise Steve makes when he shoves Bucky away and the stern tone of his voice do nothing to hide the grin he's given up suppressing. “Don’t kiss me with your ass, Bucky! That’s impolite.”

Bucky snorts. “I’m gonna punch _you_ in the face, you fucking—”

“Take me, tough guy.”

Face scrunched up and looking probably about as tough as a toddler who's scraped his knee, Bucky raises his left hand in the air between them and slowly folds each finger down. "I don't think you can _handle_ this," he says, and he gives Steve the gentlest play punch a metal fist can, a tiny tap to the jut of his chin.

Then he shifts probably no more than a centimeter, and something stabs him in the ass. His mouth pops open in a silent shout like he's having an orgasm, and Steve says, "Punching me get you off that easily?"

Bucky grunts. He stares at the ceiling, and lifts his ass off the bed, bringing the offending object with it, and says, " _No._ I found your fucking pin."

 

 

 

-

 

 

Grieving over the button's dismemberment would be silly. They both know that, probably. But at work on Monday, Bucky finds himself repeatedly seized with the image of Steve, having finished kissing Bucky's ass better after extracting the pin, staring down at the button and pin in his palm, and for a flash, hardly longer than a couple blinks, looking himself like a toddler with _two_ scraped knees.

Then he clearly stuffed whatever feelings he was feeling down deep and huffed a laugh and said, "Guess I'll find a new way to torture you relentlessly," and yanked good-naturedly at Bucky's hair, and that was that for the weekend. Everything was good; everything was good nature and being yanked around by the hair.

Now Steve's not here and not dragging him around by the hair, which is of course a recipe for things to go wrong.

The sudden memory of Steve's eyebrows and frown and split-openness leads to Bucky drawing a frowny face on a document he's supposed to be proofreading, which isn't actually an _inaccurate_ reflection of his feelings about whatever the hell happened to this person's understanding of punctuation, but still needs to be scribbled out. Leads to him texting Steve a photo of himself with his eyes rolled back in his head and, _i miss you._

He makes himself a soothing cup of chamomile tea even though he should be drinking a wheelbarrow full of caffeine with how he keeps yawning. He draws some more frowny faces on post-its. He feels like a melodramatic dumbass and thinks, _well, what would Steve be (WWSB)?_ Answer: a melodramatic dumbass, so on the way home he seriously contemplates showing up at the apartment with a bona fide wedding ring to replace the button.

But he's waylaid with a more practical idea, and shows up holding a bag of magnets. "They only sell 'em by the hundreds," he explains as Steve cradles the bag in one palm, lifting to test its heft. "Coulda ripped the bag open and wormed one out to shoplift, you wanna get illegal, but, uh. I figured we'd find a use for 'em eventually."

"Okay." Steve flips the bag over. There's this look on his face like he's expecting a secret prize tucked inside, a mini action figure or decoder ring to make cereal fun. How touching. If anyone else had dumped a three pound bag of little round magnets in his lap, he'd be looking like he expected hidden landmines. "Are we playing the cooking show?"                                                                                                                            

"No, we're—Oh, yeah. You want to?" That was so long ago. The basket's been gathering dust.

"Of course I want to." His smile only lasts a second but it's bright and huge enough to be contagious."We're not?"

"Not. Right now. Later? It's a different surprise."

Much heavier than three pounds and indisputably full of landmines, he plops himself down in Steve's lap. The bag of magnets is cuddled up to Steve's chest, safe in the crook of one elbow. Ignoring the way the kitchen chairs always creak when confronted with two supersoldiers worth of weight, he loops an arm around the back of Steve's neck and attempts to look devious.

"Can I— _May I_ go in your room and root through your shit?"

"Of course," Steve says, but Bucky squirms some, clenching his ass thoughtfully, and now he's got a different hunch. He slithers his hand into the pocket of Steve's jeans, lifting his own weight away for a moment, and Steve yelps, "Hey!" and repeats, "Hey," more an admonishment, but makes no attempt to stop him.

Bucky retrieves the I TOLERATE DWIGHT EISENHOWER DOGHOUSES button and holds it up close to Steve's face. "I can't see it if it's in your pocket, Steven. What the hell are you thinking?"

"You're a little pickpocket."

"One of us looked like a Dickensian orphan once upon a time, and it ain't me."

"I looked _fine_."

"You looked adorable, sure, but you did not look _fine._ "

"You're just angling for more ass-punching."

"Always. Please, with a cherry on top?"

"I'm pretty sure you were trying to make a point." He jostles the heavy bag with a quick rain of _clack_ s. "Magnets?"

"Magnets, right. Look." He ducks, dips in, and takes a corner of the bag between his teeth. Without commentary, Steve's hand comes up to cup his head like a helmet.

Feeling suddenly dainty, protected that way, Bucky doesn't spit out the bit of plastic, instead tucking it into his cheek with his tongue. Then he uses his tongue as a tool further, poking into the hole he's made. Spooning up a magnet with its tip is harder than expected. Tasting like nothing and bitter at the same time, they seem to roll and duck out of his way with perfect adroitness like Natasha in a fight.

Finally, he flexes his tongue and two circles lift from among the others, coming with him when he straightens up. Steve's hand comes with him too, sculpted to his skull. Tongue still stuck out, Bucky removes one of the spitty magnets and puts it down on the tablecloth.

The other he holds up in the air triumphantly between his finger and thumb, and he repeats, "Look," and holds the button up too, and demonstrates, pressing the magnet to the button's back. "We'll just need glue, and then, you know. Goes on the icebox, the freezer. Not the same, but any time you need me to see it, you can drag me in here and make me look. Slam my face into it. Y'know." The hand on the back of his head tightens, and Bucky looks away from his demonstration to meet Steve's happy, narrow eyes. "No need to hide it in your pocket, baby."

Steve says, "Smart boy," and Bucky lets him have that, just saying, "Here," and handing the button and magnet over to Steve before clambering out of his lap to go rifle through the junk drawer for glue. Before he can get away, Steve tugs him closer by the back of his head, so he's standing bent over with his forehead pressed to Steve's.

"Hey," Bucky says, and Steve says, "Hey. Smart boy, all right? But idiot fucking toy. Got that? Dumbest little fuckpuppet I ever met."

Bucky's face is suddenly blazing. He says, "Thank you," with all the feeling in the world and kisses the tip of Steve's nose. "We still got Krazy Glue?"

"We do. Go on and finish my craft project." He sends Bucky off with a smack on the ass.

The button looks perfect, stuck dead-center on the freezer. Maybe he should get arts and craftsy more often.

 

 

They're cleaning up after dinner that night when Steve says, "It broke in two pieces. Magnet just takes care of one."

Kneeled on the floor next to him, Bucky finishes drying off a dish and passes it up. "Yeah, I remember the other one giving me a wake-up call. Funny how I don't remember calling down to the front desk for that."

"Stop whining. You were already awake."

"Not _that_ awake."

"It was _two days_ ago, and worse things have happened to your ass. I did worse things to your ass while the casserole was cooking."

"Hmm. You did. Did I say thank you for that yet?"

"You did, but an encore never hurts."

"Depends on which thing we're talking about encoring."

Steve splashes soapy water down at him. "Let's talk about encoring what I was trying to say."

"Two pieces. I hear you. And? Okay, you're looking at me like you actually think I'm a moron."

"If the shoe fits."

"Nope, no Cinderella down here. Try the big blond lug I live with."

"Hey!" This time the soapy water gets on the bowl Bucky's drying and he glares up at Steve about it, but Steve's already continuing, "Come on, Buck. Can't let the pin back go to waste, right? We oughta give it a purpose in life."

"Right. Of course. Everyone's gotta have one. So we're gonna—?"

"Think real hard, Buck. What could we possibly do with a _tiny_ slender sharp bit of metal, little bit like a needle?" He lifts his foot and places it on Bucky's shoulder, and Bucky feels his vision sharpen instantly, a hyperawareness of Steve's every movement flickering on. He licks his lips.

"I—sewing? Project? You wanna— _Oh_." That last part's barely audible, a ghost of breath, as the foot on his shoulder, in its gym sock, shifts, so instead of standing on him, the sole's pressing to his ear, covering it whole like an earmuff, the pressure firm and unrelenting but not enough to bow his neck. White noise roars in the small sealed space between them, the same as being held with his ears underwater.

"You know, I've been thinking," Steve says casually, and he should look comical balancing on one leg, hips twisted awkwardly like a freeze-frame of a roundhouse kick, and the bottle of dish soap still clutched in his hand, a fragile bubble perched atop its opening, but a delicious lump forms in Bucky's throat at how well Steve's faking the naturalness of the position, his muscles adapting strain-free to however he needs to move to put Bucky in his place, and at the idea of how much more comical his own body must make the scene, and he can't even see it, "if there were little studs in your ears, any time I flattened your ears to your head like this—"

He pushes harder, and when Bucky starts to give into the force, shakes his head. "No, meet me. Yeah, there we go. The backings would poke out and dig into your neck, just—Right here." No more underwater noise, or pressure. Steve's foot shifts so he can trace the spot with a toe, the line of Bucky's jaw where it first extends from behind his ear, and press into the slender soft space between jaw and neck muscle, a space Bucky hadn't really been aware of having. "There. Right in the join."

And then he goes back to standing normal and Bucky gasps a startled rush of air in, not having realized how shallow he was breathing. Faux-oblivious, Steve continues, "Been messing around with your ears a little while you sleep. Should line up exactly right. Can hold your head still _and_ jab you _and_ cut off your hearing, all in one. Sound good?"

"Uh—" Bucky's gazing up at him, wide-eyed, still startled out of some trance.

"Here, c'mon." Steve takes both his hands and tugs him up, then shoves the dish soap and the sponge into his hands. "You do the utensils."

"Right." He gets to work with Steve still standing so close, leaning against the counter.

"Do you. Like that idea?"

"Of you stabbing me? No, I _loathe_ it. It sounds—"

"Smartass, I mean, you know. Using the needle that way. I don't have to. There are other things."

"I know you don't." Finally he's processing what was actually being suggested. That sharp silver sliver from decades ago that he'd slipped through Steve's sweatshirt like pinning a corsage, that had stabbed him in the ass first thing in the morning, pushing into him again but on purpose now, opening him, giving Steve more ways to fondle him painfully. Of course it's good, but—“Is that the medically advisable way to pierce ears?”

“With a vintage presidential campaign button?” Steve puts his hands on his hips and looks amused.

“I mean, I know you'd sanitize it with a lighter or something first, but, uh, yeah. I suppose." He clacks the forks into their spot on the drying rack. "With a vintage presidential campaign button.”

“If I had to guess, no. But all of the things that could bring down someone like us, well.”

“You’re not banking on a little infected ear piercing killing me.”

“Seems doubtful. But I’m not—If it bothers you I can obviously—”

“I’m just fucking with you, Steve. I want it. Fuck medically advisable." He forgets the running sink, grabbing the front of Steve's shirt with a wet, soapy hand. "I want you to stick this broken piece of your stupid joke through my flesh, okay?”

“Good. That's good." He turns the tap off for Bucky but doesn't pry loose the hand in his shirt or even act annoyed about the splash of hot water. His hand tangles in Bucky's hair, getting a good grip, holding him in place. "I _was_ just gonna use a safety pin. Maybe a sewing needle. This is better.”

“You could, uh. "Sew thread around my earlobes in loops, you know. Some other time. If you wanted to.”

“Oh, _could_ I? We’ll see. And hey." His stance shifts minutely. He holds up one finger and doesn't so much wag it at Bucky as stab the air aggressively between their noses. "Don’t think ’cause I’m agreeing with you to fuck medically advisable this one time that I will in the future, all right? I’ll do this one small thing to you that I wouldn’t do to anyone else. And you’ll thank me, and you won’t badger me for more of that.”

“I’m pretty sure you don’t do any of the stuff you do to me to anyone else. Think I might’ve heard about it through the grapevine by now.”

“You know what I mean.” He shakes him a little by the hand in his hair and Bucky hisses. “Don’t talk back when I’m telling you something serious.”

“Sorry. I know. I won’t badger. Whatever animal’s the opposite of a badger, that’s me. Some kinda fish, probably."

“Sure. Some kinda cockroach. Anyway, what grapevine? Where are you seeing grapevines around here? You think we live in California? I’d rather die again. Phone wires, Buck.”

“Tin can telephone strings.”

“Exactly. You woulda heard about it through the tin can telephone strings.”

“Oh,” Bucky says. “ _Oh_. Steve, that’s a great idea.”

 

 

 

-

 

 

Empty cans of Campbell's tomato soup and a long, long length of string, red to match (cans, star, Bucky's skin whenever Steve gets through working him over). He rinses them out after Steve heats himself up a whole stock pot of soup for a late lunch. Like the ketchup and water cocktails he used to mix up, thrifty, at the automat and chug while Bucky watched and grimaced.

The one time Steve mixed a cocktail up for Bucky—only half a cup, but still—and softly ordered him to drink it, he watched Bucky with a hunger Bucky wasn't feeling at all. Enough to compensate for that lack of hunger, for his turning stomach. Enough to get his stomach flipping around in other, better ways. Not thinking about drinking ketchup but about drinking ketchup because _Steve_ _said to_.

Alone in their home after, Steve stroked his throat with one finger, slow up and down. "What a good boy," he muttered. "So good for me where everyone could see," and Bucky let the words in with no fight at all.

He knocks one of the clean and empty cans against Steve's cheek to get his attention. "Aren't these famous art now? Should we really be defacing 'em?"

"Funny guy. Tool box is under my bed, you want a drill bit. You're allowed to go get it."

"Thanks, honey."

Steve points to the I TOLERATE DWIGHT EISENHOWER DOGHOUSES magnet on the freezer like that's a response, which, well. Bucky feels himself blush. Red to match.

A whole bag of goldfish crackers already went into the pot of soup to swim and turn to mush. But when Bucky comes back with the tools and the string and his paper with the measurements all noted down, Steve's pulled another bag out from somewhere. A top hat? His own ear? The actual ocean or a pet store or a county fair?

Point is, when Bucky smiles, Steve smiles back, and the orange fish he throws at Bucky's mouth, a snack, smiles back, la la la goldfish, before _crunch._ A perfect catch. Smile on his face; smile on Steve's face as he taps his foot on the floor next to his chair and says through a gross mouth full of red and orange, "C'mere."

A smile dissolved and down Bucky's throat, and then more and more of those smiles; Steve feeds him palmfuls of crackers like arsenic cubes to a horse. They don't really talk. The air's full enough of chewing and slurping and the turning of Steve's book pages and metal can bottoms getting pierced like ears in Bucky's careful hands with little _schick_ s.

Smile after smile slips into Bucky's mouth and converts to mush and drops into his stomach and absorbs into his bloodstream like whatever nutrients are in the crackers. Calcium? He says, "Hey, could I see the bag a moment?" and Steve says, "No," but holds it up in front of his eyes and Bucky nods and says, "Thanks."

Calcium, yeah, like that. Good for his smile. Fish-cracker happiness swims in his blood, a close cousin to endorphins from biking or fucking or, in another life, fighting. _Snick_ goes the scissors portioning off bright red string, a close cousin to _snack._ And Steve's hand pauses, sometimes, in the feeding process, to pet over Bucky's head. Probably he'll need to wash a cheesy sheen out of his hair later. Probably he can let that slide.

 

 

 

-

 

 

“Where’s the ice cube?” Bucky asks, when he can talk normal again, when his face isn’t occupied with smiling big as an eighteen-wheeler and his throat’s not stuffed up with emotional cargo.

Accounted for: potato wedge; vintage presidential campaign button pin; lighter and alcohol swab for some perfunctory sterilization; a purple Sharpie; and two sets of studs, one plain stainless steel spheres and the other teeny Captain America shields. He digs around more in the pink tissue paper exploding out of the gift bag, not really expecting an ice cube to be slipping around in there, but afraid his hand might hit a hidden tube of numbing gel.

Last they talked, Steve wasn’t decided yet on whether he’d let Bucky feel the needle poking through and sliding in. He’d pinched Bucky’s earlobe between thumb and forefinger and shook him, making the hot pain flare bright, emphasizing how floppy and delicate he was there that it took so much force to use his earlobe as a handle, and said, “It’s not about hurting you, Buck. It’s about owning you. It’s about doing what I like to you. Maybe I don’t want you distracted from that by your poor little ears feeling bad.”

Bucky said, “Whichever way you want, Steve,” and Steve smiled and rewarded him by pinching the other lobe too, twisting his head side to side, by those two grips. It felt like two baby alligators biting him, dangling, stretching him with their squirmy weight. A warm and wet feeling, imaginary blood.

But here and now Steve says, “Sorry, Buck. I decided to develop a phobia of ice cubes in response to my terrible trauma. I chopped the freezer off the icebox while you were sleeping. For that matter, we gotta stop calling it that.”

This is the second time Steve’s referred to himself as traumatized since starting to talk about considering seeing a therapist, and Bucky grins.

“Yeah, asshole? What if _I_ really _did_ develop a phobia of ice cubes in response to _my_ trauma?”                                                       

Steve’s voice is gentler and he doesn’t blink when he says, “Then I’d chop the freezer off the icebox. And stop calling it that. And only drink lukewarm liquids from here on out.”

“You freak. I’ll do the same if you ever really do, so don’t fucking curse it, you wanna keep owning a freezer.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “No ice cube. No numbing gel. I only brought ‘em up to fuck with you.”

“Asshole.”

“Keep calling me names, maybe I’ll change my mind.”

“Sorry. But I thought it wasn’t about hurting me. You didn’t want me distracted.”

Steve puts a hand to the side of Bucky’s face, and Bucky turns into it, kissing the heel. “I think I’ve trained you up well enough by now that you can keep focused on the point. A little pinprick like that’s enough to make you forget you’re mine, it means I’ve been doing my job wrong.”

“You’re not. You’re doing a good job, Steve. All right? Every job you do's good.”

 

 

When he first showed Steve his earring Pinterest board and pointed to the shields, Steve hadn’t looked as thrilled as expected; he’d narrowed his eyes and tucked his lips in.

And of course; Bucky could have brained himself with a frying pan, he felt so stupid. All that time spent reassuring Steve that giving up the Captain America gig was a good call, that Steve had his full spousal support on the matter, and here he was sending mixed messages.

“Wait, no never—” he started, colliding head-on with Steve’s, “I like that.”

“Oh. Uh. You sure? You don’t have to say you like it just ‘cause. It’s okay if you want something else. They’re for you too.”

“Since when do I tell you I like stuff just ‘cause? I like them. I’ll find you some.”

“Okay, but. You know, I wasn’t thinking. If you’re not going to anymore, then? I mean, you’re allowed to like them, but—”

“Oh, am I, your highness? Thanks. Look, it’s—It sounds stupid, so don’t fucking laugh.”

“Yeah, you’ll smack me if I do?” Steve glared, and Bucky butted his forehead against his shoulder in apology. “Not gonna laugh at you. Promise. _I’ll_ smack me if I do.”

“What a dutiful young man. It’s just. It’s a nice thought. I’m handing off the real one, but you’ll still—It’ll still be. Looking out for me. Because it’s on you, and you, y’know, look—” Waving his hand in some kind of meaningless meaningful gesture, he looked like he hoped Bucky would brain _him_ with a frying pan to make the words shut up for a second, so Bucky kissed him. That shut the words up pretty well too.

When he pulled back, he said, “I gotcha. I get your meaning, you wanna stop.”

Steve’s mouth twitched. “Anyway, it’s not like—I mean, I am, you know. Keeping the outfit.” He ducked in close to say it, and winked, and Bucky felt himself blush.

“Oh. Good. You haven’t stepped on me in those boots in forever.”

“Yeah? Guess not. Sounds like I’ve been neglecting my patriotic duty.”

“Mm-hmm. Disgraceful. How can we _ever_ correct that?”

That night, Steve laid him out on the floor and left a boot print on each of his ass cheeks. One from a Captain America uniform boot, and the other from one of the spectator boots Bucky’d bought him as a joke.

They’d been worn almost to shreds, permanently yellowed, the leather cracked as a peal of thunder in past tense, and Bucky’d assumed they were sleeping in a landfill. But when Steve went to fetch the dumb red costume boots from the back of his closet, he crawled out only holding one, a spectator boot in the other hand, and he dressed himself up mismatched before going to town turning Bucky into a hiking trail.

Face-planted in Steve's soft side of the bed, he’d shivered and moaned at the suction of Steve's mouth (and at his skating teeth and lapping tongue) over those boot-print bruises. A bite to the Captain America boot imprint, teeth clamped slightly harder and longer than they'd been so far, had him humping the bed until Steve put a steady hand in a red costume glove on his hip, held him still and said, "No. Be good for me. Let me." So Bucky stilled his hips and screwed up his face and focused instead on the big question here.

"Why only one?" His voice cracked like the leather.

Steve kissed where he'd been biting. "What?"

"Only one Cap boot."

This time the, "What?" was clearly not genuine. Only to fuck with him. And Bucky decided a whine was a better-behaved complainy response than a growl.

"One boot, one other boot. _Why._ "

Another gentle kiss, and then Steve's mouth pulled away. His hands dug into the bootprints instead, and he pulled apart Bucky's ass cheeks, exposing him, and licked a sudden stripe before blowing on his hole and Bucky yelped and just barely didn't start humping the bed again, gearing up to cry again in a fresh wave of snotty tears from holding back and being held and looked at and the soreness deep through his flesh and muscle and Steve's fingers waking that soreness up and Steve said, "Well, you know, always take off one accessory before leaving the house."

Voice already thick with tears, Bucky managed, "Coco Chanel's a Nazi."

"Who?"

"That's who said—Never mind. _Steve_. Please."

"What?"

"I don't know! Steve."

"You know why. Right? You gave me them. You know that."

Bucky almost said, _Gave you both, kinda_ , but wasn't as a true of a "kinda" as it would have once been. These weren't _that_ pair of red boots, trudging-through-mud red boots, designed-by-Bucky-and-brought-into-reality-by-Stark red boots, with the storage compartment in the heel Bucky'd dreamt up while getting himself off rough and fast hoping his orgasm would at least feel like _something_ , anything.

And Steve had said, "Smart boy," when Bucky showed him how a tin of vaseline fit in there alongside things like matches and folded paper, and _that_ had felt like something. So had Steve adding, "Fucking _filthy_ boy. You're recruiting the SSR to help us fuck more on missions?" and Bucky had shrugged. It had been the least, he figured, that the SSR owed the both of them.

Really, he only gave Steve those jokey spectator-style ones. Those were the closest things they had now to the red boots Bucky'd kissed surreptitiously in forests, kissed pulling them off Steve in the rare fully private room between missions. Closest thing, and not close at all. Where the hell on those things did you store the lube? Some designer. Clearly flunked out of fashion school.

He said, "Yeah, I did."

Steve said, "Then you know why, dumbass," and brushed his thumb over Bucky's hole, and bit down on a bruise again.

 

 

Bucky's set the gift bag on the dining table, and he's spreading his riches out, arranging them like maybe he's gonna take an artsy Instagram photo, but mostly admiring, rubbing his thumb over the smooth metal casing of the lighter, not a cheapo from the bodega but something Steve bought special, clearly. Echoing him, Steve's thumb rubs over the back of Bucky's neck, the tight knob of muscle. There's a strange stuttering about it, and a carefulness to Steve's breath, and Bucky waits it out, whatever change set in after Steve kissed him and sat them both down.

Here it is, echoing, soft: "Every job I do is good?"

"Yeah. Why you ask?"

"Close your eyes."

"Open my mouth and stick out my tongue? Will I get a big surprise?"

"It's 'big sup-rung.' I know you're stupider than a wet mop but you still know how to rhyme." Steve gets up and does something with one of the kitchen drawers, nothing complicated, before the gentle thud of him sitting back down. When he says, "Open your eyes," but not _Put your tongue away and close your mouth_ —Bucky is very good, staying stupid-looking—there's a second, tinier gift bag in his hands.

Bucky makes a high questioning noise.

Steve shrugs. "If you want it," and why wouldn't he? He accepts the bag and shows it some respect, shakes it with exaggerated care into his cupped right palm.

Another pair of earrings. Studs too, stainless steel poles, but these are varnished wood, spade-shaped. Painted red, white, and blue. Not tearing his eyes off them, Bucky points to his own dangling tongue, and Steve takes it between his fingertips and guides it back into Bucky's mouth.

"Steve," Bucky says.

" _If_ you want it."

"Jesus. Why are you like this?"

But Steve's wound tight and doesn't give into the prod, doesn't roll his eyes and snittily apologize for giving a shit about Bucky's opinion. He says, "I know you don't really like that one."

"I'm—Why do you think that?"

"Buck, the second your head was on straight you were yelling to anyone who'd listen about how it was an idiot move, anyone designing a character that took a little piece of wood like that into battle." Polite of him not to mention that "anyone who would listen" in this context meant "Steve."

"I didn't say that. I said it was an idiot move for _you_ to bring it into battle."

"Maybe you _meant_ that. You were being polite."

"Crazy of me. Remind me to never do that again."

"Yeah. So if you don't want them—"

"I do. Just—You're the one who doesn't like it. It was fake. That was your whole problem, with the whole entire kitten kaboodle."

"Why would I bring it with me if I hated it?"

"'Cause you're a self-loathing idiot. Ow!" Steve's knuckle presses into the spot he just pinched on Bucky's arm.

"That's not the point! Agree to disagree, all right?"

"I don't hate it. You—"

"It did some good. Got it? It did some good and I got you back. So I like it. Wasn't so practical maybe, but. It helped me save you. Other one—"

"Hey, Steve." He laughs, lightly, covering Steve's wrist with his hand. The gesture earns him another pinch over the last one, a thank you, and he nearly gasps. "So maudlin. Hey, you want me to wear these ones instead?"

"I told you. If you want. Stop making me repeat myself."

"Well I like the other ones too. I wanna wear them both. But for the first time—Yeah, like you said. You had it and—" He squeezes his eyes shut hard and Steve squeezes his pinched arm, waiting him out. "Anyway, I like thinking about how stupid and reckless you are. You know that honey. It's one of your best qualities."

Steve gets him in a chokehold and gives him a noogie, and the conversation is forgotten. There are so many parts of his body that Steve has to try giving noogies to, and at least one non-neck-part that could really do with being in a chokehold, if you ask him.

After, Steve sweeps all the gifts back into bags, and says, "I'll keep an eye on these until I'm ready," overlapping with Bucky's whiny, "Hey, those are _mine._ " But Bucky's too limp and the kitchen tiles are too pleasantly cool against his skin anyway, so he forgoes putting up more of a fight, rolling his eyes and waving dismissively at Steve.

"You'll see 'em again when you see 'em again," Steve reassures him.

"Gee, your grasp on how reality works gets better every day."

 

 

 

-

 

 

“So I won’t get an infection probably, right? But what if it’s too far in the other direction and they don’t stay open?" Bucky's got his head in Steve's lap; he rotates so now he's looking straight up at the underside of Steve's jaw.  "What if I take ‘em out for more than ten seconds, to clean ‘em or change ‘em and they just—” He holds his hand out, fingers splayed, before clenching into a sudden fist.                                                                                                                                             

Credits continue rolling on the TV screen, but they're past the part where it's fun and animated and Steve makes notes on a legal pad about design elements because he decided to try taking a leaf out of Bucky's book with regards to writing shit down while watching other shit. Now, all the cascading white-on-black names are for jobs like Best Boy Grip and Best Boy Grip #2: Less Best, and Assistant to the Hairstylist for Merryl Streep's Barista's Dog.

“No-brainer. If it closes, I’ll just—” Tilting his chin down to make eye contact for this very serious matter, Steve worms one finger into the tight crease of Bucky’s curled up little finger. Twists and shoves in further like a drill bit, until in spite of itself, Bucky’s fist is gripping him, hugging him. The fierce hug of someone unbearably aware that they’ll have to let go eventually. The breath Bucky blows out his nose is something gentler than a laugh, and he ducks his head and kisses Steve’s exposed fingertip. Strokes the nail with his thumb.

“All right,” he says.

Steve says, “And then,” and exerts an unbreaking pressure, peeling Bucky’s fingertips away from the protection of his own palm.

It’s just as hard not to resist as it is to not give in immediately. Docilely baring the sensitive underside of his hand to Steve the way he might his belly or his throat to show his love would be missing the point. He doesn’t help and he doesn’t hinder; he exists, like his earlobes do, a part of him with no muscles or servos, fully out of his control. He exists and Steve breaks him open, puts him back the way he wants him.

Says, “I’ll pierce them as many times as it takes, until your body learns what it’s supposed to do. How it’s supposed to be for me.” He kisses the tip of Bucky’s finger, belatedly reciprocal, and lays the opened hand palm-down on the couch cushion. “Doesn’t sound like something I’ll get tired of.”

“What if they close up every day?”

“If that frustrates you, then we’ll stop. But from where I’m sitting? It sounds nice.” Steve curls over him, a hand on each of Bucky’s ears, their faces too far for them to kiss but not a ton further. They could kiss. It just wouldn’t be spinally advisable.

Thumbs rubbing small circles on Bucky’s earlobes, the tiniest massage, Steve says, “Every morning. Just like breakfast or brushing your teeth. You get on your knees in front of me. I’m on the couch or the kitchen chair or a bed. You can choose; I’ll be nice. And I take the needle from this button or whatever other needle we get—you can choose—and put it right in you, where you’re still soft and smooth even if I’ve done it a million times. I’m happy to do it a million times. And it’s still gonna hurt every time. I promise.”

“How do you know?”

“Well.” All the muscles in Bucky's legs lock up when one of Steve's hands switches from rubbing to pinching. And then a _real_ bite to his other earlobe joins in. The tooth kind, and his hips jump, thrusting into nothing. Steve's always done everything tooth and nail; tooth and nail, he gets Bucky's head tipping back, his calves kicking—like a reflex test at the doctor's, in a world where he can handle a reflex test at the doctor's—his mouth opening and eyes shutting and his ass clenching at all that pointy heat zipping from his ears to every other part of him, along all those electric live third rails his body's made of.

Now nail and no tooth, only one earlobe sending out heat, and Bucky responds to the loss with a whimper. Steve needed his mouth free so he can whisper in Bucky's no-longer-bitten ear, "That ever stop hurting? That hurt every time I’ve done it since we were just kids?”

There are two bodies, in two times. One’s lying here on a floral couch in the future, with a mouth that tastes like orange juice and hair kept touchable with two different conditioners, and Steve's heartbeat steady, healthy beneath him. The other’s been recently roughly undressed in a tiny kitchen and is hunched over and breathless with laughter and want as Steve drags him by the ear to their sleeping area, so that he can get on his hands and knees on the floor, ass pointed at the bed, while Steve drapes across their mattress with a book and fucks his fingers into Bucky with pointed disinterest while reading aloud.

Two bodies, overlapping, joined by one small, matching pain, stapled together at the earlobe. Bucky’s in both bodies at once. In a lot of in-between bodies maybe too, and maybe others before that, ones he’s missing.

He's stapled, kept tidy, all his past selves a part of him when Steve’s nails dig into his flesh.

“Yeah. Yeah, thank god. It’s still so good.”

“Then there we go. No reason a needle shouldn’t be the same.” The pinch ends. The heat shows itself out. But Steve's breath is hot too, on Bucky's face, when he whispers, "That really got you going, huh?"

" _Yes_."

"Anything I can do to help you out there?"

"Yeah, Steve. Anything. Anything, all of it, whatever."

"'All of it?' Now, that's a tall order, Buck. How 'bout we start with a handjob?"

"You're giving my hands a job? Thanks, Employer Steve."

Steve glares, but sounds amused when he says, "Yeah, actually," and hires one of Bucky's hands to stay pulling tight on Bucky's hair. The other lucky, robotic son of a gun gets handed the high-powered of career of covering Bucky's mouth and nose ten seconds at a time as prompted.

Responsibility for supervising Bucky's dick all goes to Steve's hands. They wrap and move around him tight and good and wet with spit and Bucky's desperate-for-it dripping. This too is the same, endlessly good, from body to body, year to year, how his hips are held in place by one hard hand because they can't be trusted not to twitch and buck and misbehave, the burr in Steve's voice every time he says, "Stop," and his huge dark pupils watching Bucky subsequently smother himself.

After, when his every molecule's slumped and drunk and sated, it's intensely familiar, how Steve shifts out from under him and kneels next to the couch so he can lick up all the come, cleaning them both, then leans in close and spits it onto Bucky's cheek and says, "You're welcome," in his ear, and climbs back up on the couch to be spooned. To be the parajumper wearing Bucky's parachute body, hurtling Bucky toward earth, saving him from floating off to somewhere no one knows him, knows what he's for or where he belongs.

 

 

 

-

 

 

Up ahead, just short of their door, a fire hydrant's uncapped and spewing in a broad arc. The week's been unseasonable, wall-to-wall sweat and fast-fading sunburns, the birdcall of a single neighborhood ice cream truck dragged out of hibernation, their own personal pints of ice cream in the freezer, and now this. Kids, some in bathing suits and some like they came straight from church, run through the water shrieking. A teen girl in jean shorts and an oversized tee's standing there, still, head tipped back, eyes closed, soaked.

The kids are so cute, grinning freely, some twirling, big-eyed cartoon characters screen-printed across one kid's suit, and the girl's so—familiar, in this way that's not muscle-memory but skin-memory, that feel of peace and goosebumps in the midst of a sun fit to bake muffins on a car's hood, that he forgets for a moment to tense, to weave away.

But Steve's hand tightens on his hip and he's being redirected, shuffled over so now Steve's the one street-side, the one hit with the tail-end of the blast as they pass, leaving only a nothing-mist to graze Bucky's skin, dodged bullet. A damp patch appears on the shoulder of Steve's white tee, at his waist too, and he tries to blink away the beads clinging to his long dark eyelashes, but Bucky beats him to the punch, leaning close so that he can wipe them away with a thumb.

Steve smiles, small and grateful in his un-showy way. Bucky ruffles his hair, also damp on that side, and kisses his nearest earlobe. Showier, Steve turns to make sure Bucky can see the grateful smile, as though the hair-ruffling was helpful too, and maybe it was. Who knows how things get defined in that twisty Steve brain?

Slipping his hand into Steve's back pocket—only recently did he finally convince Steve that keeping his wallet back there was a dumbass security tactic—Bucky kisses his not-wet shoulder. He asks as Steve's unlocking the door, "Sure you don't wanna join in? Bet they'd love that, big superhero playing with 'em."

Steve puts on a performance of pretending to consider it, then goes back to fiddling with the key. It sticks more and more each day. They need to bug the super. "Nah. I've got a prior appointment."

"You don't say?"

"I _just_ said, Buck. Pay attention."

Today's the day, Bucky realized earlier, with how often during the movie Steve reached up unconsciously to hold his earlobes, rubbing the downy skin with his thumb, as though that's a natural gesture of public affection for anyone ever. With how Steve's finger would slip upward and trace around the backs of Bucky's ears, their anchor point to his skull.

And Steve said, "Those would look nice on you," about a pair of diamond earrings swinging like chandeliers from an onscreen woman's ears. And asked a minute later, tone a day's drive away from nonchalant, "Did you have plans when we get home?"

Bucky swatted his arm lightly and whispered, "I'm trying to watch the movie, asshole," followed by, closer to Steve's ear, "My dance card's free, hunk."

Steve swatted him back, a little bit harder, as was proper and correct. "Good." He zipped his lips with an extravagant twist of his wrist. For the next twenty minutes, at least.

So on the whole, it wouldn't exactly take an ace detective to guess what's gonna happen when they're inside, shoes kicked off, Bucky's bag dropped by the door.

The Sharpie comes first, Steve in a chair pulled out from the table and Bucky on his knees in front of him, facing away, spine straight except for cervically; his head’s bowed how it would have been for a haircut long ago, for a razor shaping up the nape.

“S’posed to do it from the front,” he says in response to Steve’s hand gripping the bony rind of his ear like it’s the handhold on the climbing walls Natasha's been dragging them both out to. Too much sleepy sigh creeps into his voice for it to seem like a complaint.

“Huh. That’s not what you normally say," Steve teases. "I’ll do it how I wanna. Now hold still.”

Very still, even when the wet kiss of the Sharpie’s tip to each lobe has him wanting to shudder and slump back into Steve. Giving himself up to everything.

“Good boy,” Steve says, and squeezes the big ball of hair knotted up on top of Bucky’s head so it's out of the way. A quiet growl’s enough response to that. And then Steve’s yanking him up by the bicep, a sudden strain in his armpit that snatches away his breath, and marching him over to the kitchen counter.

“Moving?” he asks stupidly.

“Sure looks like it,” and all right. Getting on his knees can be how they do it all those future times. All those like-breakfast-and-dental-hygiene times, if he falls into a loop of the holes opening, closing, opening, closing, miniscule guppy mouths.

This time’s special and needs the special staging of Steve bending him over the counter so his hips dig into its lip, arms folded up in front of him, chin on his overlapping hands. Steve pulls down Bucky’s pants. They’re baggy cotton joggers, yanked down in one go along with his briefs.

“Are you fucking me first?” He spreads his legs as far as he can with the pants around his thighs, trying to provide a better view. Maybe he won't even get a proper fucking, just have something stuck up in him to wait for later. Maybe ice cubes up his ass instead of numbing his ears. “You’ll need to wash your hands between, you know.” Steve smacks him hard on one side of his ass, the sound ringing through the room, and follows up with a series of quick slaps to his inner thigh, so Bucky loudly gulps and gasps, wanting to push back and ask for more. “You beating me first then?” he tries.

A pinch over where his thigh must be pinking up. “Calm down. I’m not doing anything with this.” And he gropes Bucky’s ass thoroughly, two-handed. Squeezing and pulling at his flesh until his eyes flutter shut. Steve steps away. “But it doesn’t hurt to instill some humility in you now and then.”

Bucky laughs. “Oh, sure. Just now and then.”

“I know what I said.” A pause. A smug smile is audible in the words, “Though I guess it does _hurt_ if I’m doing it right.”

“Well, it _better_. You promised.” There’s a clatter from the vase by the icebox where they keep cooking implements, and this time when Steve smacks him, it’s with something hard and small that leaves a burning patch and makes his hips jump. “Wooden spoon. A classic.”

“Wooden _spatula_ , moron.” They'll need to spend some good time training him to recognize the difference, clearly. The spatula gets tossed in the sink. “Now don’t make me break my word about not beating you right now. I’m doing you a favor. The least you could do in return is not be a wiseass for a few minutes.”

“You’re right, Steve, and—”

“No shit.”

“And I’m sorry.” He swallows the urge to gripe at Steve for interrupting when he’s being polite. Falling for such obvious bait would be embarrassing, sure, but they’re trying to do something here. Embarrassment can wait until later.

A cabinet opens above his head, and Steve’s pressed against his ass and hip to reach into it. The clattering of dishes being shoved around. When he’s finally done, cabinet knocked closed, he sets a cookie tin on the counter, where Bucky can see it if he cuts his eyes to the side. Steve opens it up and reaches in.

He pries Bucky’s right hand from under the left, and the redistribution, sudden tiny drop, has the hard line of his jaw and the bumps of his metal knuckles shoving together, painful for his face but barely registered by his hand. He just smiles and tilts his head to pillow his cheek on the metal instead and watch the other hand hovering in the air, wrist in Steve’s grasp.

“Feel this?” Pinprick to the pad of Bucky’s ring finger. Doesn’t draw blood and beginning-of-Snow-White up their kitchen counters, but it’s cat-claw sharp and he sucks in a breath. Then Steve’s mouth is there and sucking on the pricked finger in turn, covering Bucky’s whole body with his to reach.

“I feel it.” He swallows and tries to talk above a whisper this time. “Wasn’t sharp as that before, right?”

He regrets asking when it means his finger sliding free of Steve’s mouth. But Steve stays covering him, at least, to answer, “Of course not. It’s about sixty-six years old, Buck. Used some sandpaper to get it ready for you.”

“You keep the sandpaper?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You _can’t_ think about it. You either kept it or didn’t.”

“Sure I can. I put it in a box. Like a cat. Now it’s anyone’s guess.”

“Don't talk like you know shit about physics; it's insulting. Did you keep it or not?”

Steve sighs heavily and heads for the sink. The absence of his leaden electric-blanket body is like the absence of a limb (Bucky reserves the right to use that bit of hyperbole whenever he wants).

The spatula smacks down against his ass again, twice on each side, sweet harsh burn, and this time when Steve covers him up, the denim rubbing against his ass makes Bucky moan and squirm. Denim and sandpaper share an evolutionary ancestor. Steve’s laughing. “Shut it. And stay still. You’ll know if I kept the sandpaper when it’s time for you to know.”

“You kept it.”

“Shut it. And I’m not kidding right now. I want to pierce your ears some time before sundown, all right?” Bucky shuts it. He nods, feeling guilty for a second. With a kiss to the shadow below Bucky’s nearest eye, Steve stands, and picks up the needle, grabbing the lighter out of the cookie tin too. “I don’t mean shut it all the way. Just spit the backtalk out your mouth before I have to clean it out for you.” He jerks his head toward the dish soap and sponge. “You can talk. And watch me for this.”

The emptiness of the threat, the fact that Steve would never use dish soap when they have a tiny supply of bar soap earmarked for his mouth now, isn't relevant. Cool anticipation rushes through him, lapping at the core of him like low-tide against sand, reminding him how owned he is. “Yes, Steve.”

“That’s more like it. All right.”

 _Click._ A puppy-tongue of fire is born and Bucky watches its wavering. Peripherally, he knows Steve is watching his watching eyes. The needle pokes at the fire, tries to prick it full of holes. Teasing not itself or the fire, but Bucky, who swears he can feel his temperature rising the longer the fire exists.

All they’d have to do is close about an eight inch gap, and Steve could burn him. His hair, or his clothes, or singe off his eyebrows and eyelashes. Have him stick his tongue into the fire, trying to kiss it in thanks for cleaning the pin up so that he can safely take its sting, smoothly swallow it up in his flesh.

What if Steve burned his fingerprints off, as a kindness? It would be one less way for the government to maybe track him. Only Steve’s allowed to track him, a bloodhound inhaling Bucky’s scent off one of his sweaters and tearing off to tackle him down. Listening for whatever distinguishes Bucky’s breathing or footsteps from anyone else’s, because that’s info Steve’s got memorized of course. Must have it tattooed on the inside of his heart the way Bucky’s got that info about Steve tattooed inside his own.

Steve doesn’t do all that. He stops teasing and burns the needle clean in a couple thorough passes. But he lets the flame live on briefly when he’s done, looking between it and Bucky, Bucky’s wide eyes, like he knows what Bucky’s dreaming about, and a laughs falls out his nose. Then: no flame. The lighter returns to its cookie tin home. A single-use rubbing alcohol wipe completes the sanitization.

By now, the raw potato wedge from his gift bag full of goodies should be shriveling, surface the texture of hands worn dry from hours of dishwashing. But the wedge Steve presses to his ear as a landing pad for the needle is smooth and damp. He asks, "Different one?" and Steve says, "I peeled off the shriveled bits. Wooden spatula's not the only kitchen tool we got that's good for you."

 "Oh." No other words sum up how that thought strikes him in the gut. How close would the peeler come to scraping him open, if Steve used it to shave him smooth as the potato, running it up his leg, up his inner thigh to find where the dark nest of his pubic hair dipped low? How sharp are its teeth? Sharper than Steve's?

"Yeah, _oh_. Now hold that potato in place and don't move for me. I gotcha here." He's gotchBucky everywhere, hips crowded up against his ass, one arm a steel reinforcement bearing down along his spine. And when Bucky takes over holding the potato in anticipation of its flesh being pierced the same time as his own, Steve's cheek comes to rest on the back of Bucky's head and the needle's tip touches the Sharpied dot on his lobe, and he can feel the heel of Steve's hand there too, cupping the piercing site so it's a secret.

Bucky tries to stay perfectly still, like a vampire that's pretending to be a corpse to get through its open casket funeral without incident. Pretty and polite and listening to how much it's loved. But when the pin slips into him, he sucks in a sudden breath, because he's not actually a vampire, because he's forced alive with the pain even though it's such a small thing.

Playing catch with in the park as a gawky kid, he once got bee-stung on the tip of his nose and that hurt so much more than this. Last week, Steve left a belt buckle bruise on his thigh after thrashing him scarlet, and even though he's what he is, it remained the next day. This is nothing.

But he sucks in that breath and Steve laughs quiet, kisses the back of his head, and wiggles the pin around some.

"You like that? You like having it inside you?"

"Mm." Stillness was abandoned with that intake of breath, so he wiggles his body, matching the pin.

Call and response; more pin-wiggling. "Answer my question, Buck."

"I like it." It's a part of Steve, really, inside him, opening up one of his softest places. Like Steve's grown a claw, the bee-stinger-slim equivalent of that Wolverine idiot's nonsense.

Steve's claw, formerly known as the thing that let him advertise to everyone how much he tolerates Bucky, the bit of metal tethering him to that declaration. It's still with him—within spitting distance of the message itself where it's stuck to the icebox door—and stuck inside Bucky, forced its way in. He's tolerated whether he likes it or not. Tolerated forever, accidents and dismemberment be damned.

Steve says, "Well, that's too bad, Buck, 'cause it's going away."

He wants to object, but even if he's not corpse-still, he's being pretty and polite and good and he knows what's next.

"Okay."

"Okay what?" because Steve loves questions with no proper answer.

"Okay, _Steven_ , my beloved."

"Thanks." The pin slips from him pie-easy. Panic pokes its head into his heart and looks around and yells that maybe the hole's gonna swell closed immediately. You pull a toothpick from a finished pie crust and it comes away clean, like it was never there, and he's like that now, isn't he? Fully baked pie.

But Steve says, "Aw, look at you all open for me," and touches the top tip of Bucky's ear in lieu of contaminating the piercing site. He croons, "You want me to fill that little hole up?" So maybe Bucky's not done baking after all.

The pretty, polite vampire in its casket breaks character more, giggling, "Jesus fucking H."

"No, _earring_ fucking _your new hole._ It's earring fucking H."

"You're the worst person alive." But his voice trembles.

"Thanks, Buck. You too." Another harsh inner thigh pinch hurts more than the piercing, in the good way that it always does, the pain a tiny swimmer pushing its way through the cresting warm Atlantic wave of his body until it's knocked under, out of sight. "Now fucking ask me for it before this thing closes up. Y'know, since it's so much less slutty than your other holes. Those are always gaping and ready."

There's a larger, louder whimper. There's his dick, making itself known, and he nods. "Please, Steve. Please put it in me."

"Put what in what?"

His brain wants him to roll his eyes. His dick and heart sway him instead toward, "Please put the shield in my new hole, Steve. My new, um, little hole. My virgin hole? Put your shield in it, please. I need it. I need you, okay?"

Steve sounds almost unbearably proud and sincere when he says, "There's my tolerable boy. Open up," and Bucky can't help but fight the peace and quiet sweeping through him at that, bitching, "You just opened me up."

Steve _tsk_ s. "Don't be intolerable. You'll make a liar out of me." Yesterday's news, but Bucky's finished his token struggle against the praise, so smiles and lets his eyes shut and lets himself be tolerable. Tolerated. One of Steve's hands cups the back of his skull and smushes his smiling face into the counter. The other sneaks under all the smushedness to carefully push the earring into his newly opened ear.

The earring's presence doesn't really feel like anything, and that should be disappointing. But it's heady, might explode him, the knowledge that it feels fully natural to have this symbol of Steve inside him.

He can imagine the little shield blossomed organically from his flesh the same time his voice and balls dropped. The same time something fiery and terrifying started stirring in him whenever Steve gave him a light affectionate smack or flick or pinch, the way they'd always traded between them, regular rough-and-tumble kid stuff until it was something else too.

Until it linked up with the tiny dog-ears on every page in his copy of _Tom Sawyer_ that made any mention of Tom getting a whipping, with how he'd always been jealous of anyone who mentioned nightmares of showing up at school naked, with how calming it was to pinch himself all over when he was anxious, the time he locked himself in his room and hid under his bed and beat his own palms with a ruler, _with, with, with,_ all the secret shameful pieces of him he still sometimes can't believe Steve loves to see, to hold, to nurture.

Steve twists the earring. That's a feeling. Steve pets down his spine, then, coming to rest his hand on Bucky's ass and squeeze, and he murmurs, "My sweet little thing," and _oh,_ that's a feeling too. "You want another new hole, honey? That's not enough for you, right? You've got a lot of holes I use plenty already, but I know you've been aching for more. So insatiable."

"Please. If you want me to have it. I wanna have it."

"Want to have what?"

"Another hole, Steve, _please_. Please open me up and fill me more, please. I need it."

"I know you do, honey. That's what you were built for, right?" Steve's hand leaves his ass. _Click_ , a tongue of heat out of sight but so close to Bucky's face he can feel it layering on top of the heat running under his skin.

The harsh scent of alcohol, and then it's ready. Steve's stroking the tip of his un-pierced ear. "Potato," he says, and Bucky obediently tries to pass himself the potato over the back of his neck, but Steve intercepts him like he can't even manage something so easy. It's true his hands are shaky. "Here you go, baby," he says, pressing the wedge into Bucky's metal fingers. "You hold that still for me," and he does, new wetness against this lobe.

"Can you—" Bucky pauses, suddenly shy, but he needs. "Say it again?"

"Be more specific, Buck."

"What I'm built for. Or, can you be more specific?"

"Everyone's a critic, huh? Come on, little idiot, you know." His voice sinks low and he does too, placing his mouth by the ear he's already violated. "You were built for me to open and fill. Open and fill you whenever I want, however I want, especially if it hurts. That's what I got you for. You were custom-built, right? I'm the only person alive to own one of you."

A whimper's punched out of Bucky, and a thin noise like he'd normally make in the middle of a crying jag. But his eyes are only almost wet. "Yeah," he says, and Steve says, "That's what you needed to know?"

"Yeah, yeah, Steve. Please pierce my ear."

"Keep saying 'please.'"

"Please, please, please—" The litany continues, swooping up and down in volume, slurring as all he wants is to hold his breath, and pitches high when the pin finally sinks through his flesh with a pinch, pins him to the potato, and Steve holds it there, wiggling it around again, and he hasn't said _stop_ so Bucky still says, "Please, please, please," until with a more decisive wiggle, Steve's voice snaps harshly for him to, "Shut _up_ ," and it's good as being backhanded. He falls silent in the middle, a _please_ coming out _plea._

Steve says. "Feels good to be back in you." Bucky swallows hard. "Feels good, Buck? Verbal answer."

"Yes."

"Wish I could stay here?"

" _Yes_."

"Poor little thing. But that's what these earrings are for, right? So you can keep me in you? You want that?"

"Am—Am I allowed to say 'please' again?"

"You better."

"Please, Steve. Please let me keep you in me. Please let me walk around with you inside me, please?"

"Anything, Buck." A kiss to the back of Bucky's neck accompanies the pin sliding back out, and once again his biology doesn't betray him and smooth him over too soon. "God, look at that tiny hole. So eager to swallow this up for me. How can one person have so many greedy openings?" Bucky whines without his own permission. "Shhh. I'm filling you, I promise."

Again, the stud entering him and sitting there, held in his new hole, doesn't feel at all like an intrusion. It's a natural part of him, a new puberty, marking the resurgence of hot unbalancing _want_ in his body, in his life. His 21st century lust.

"Thank you," he whispers and Steve whispers back, "Anything. I told you. Feels good?"

"Feels _right_."

"Good. Wouldn't want it to feel left."

His laugh is an overly literal _Ha!_ But with a wet edge. "Better not leave me."

"I told you. That's the point of these." And he taps the front of one earring, the shield, there because it looks out for him and Bucky looks out for him too.

He bows his head further forward, bypassing the hand it rests upon, so he can shove his face into the counter, so he can be part of that hardness. Can lick its smooth surface, steadying himself. The ache in his flattened nose is dull and sharp at the same time. An over-awareness that his nose is made of bones. Steve's hand covers his neck and holds him like that. Breathing is harder. Everything is good.

And then Steve says, "Ready to stand and let me see you?" and Bucky nods against the counter. That alleviates the ache and bone-awareness, smushes his nose and mouth pug-face-flat. If the counter were a two-way mirror, all the researchers down there would be pointing and laughing.

The hand tightens on his neck, scruffing, tugging, a similar ache to the one in his nose but broader, and Bucky comes happily. Muscles contract under Steve's grip. He feels like a tube of toothpaste squeezed too close to the mouth. Used but not emptied. He turns when Steve turns him.

They stand toe-to-toe, Steve's hands around Bucky's biceps. Steve's eyes flicker from earring to earring, and he looks as drunk as he gets on the Rothkos in the MoMa. All that focus on one tiny detail makes Bucky counterintuitively self-conscious about his hard dick jutting out in front of him, the pants hobbling him, how his partially dressed state is of no consequence.

That squirmy feeling coupled with how he wants to squirm under Steve's gaze makes wetness dribble from his dick and intensifies when Steve steps closer, steps _onto_ Bucky's boots and they'll need to be cleaned later. Bucky's dick is pressed against Steve and still of no consequence. Wetting up Steve's clothes and who cares and Steve's body is a delicious firm touch to the sensitive underside but he won't squirm and get friction unless he's given permission to be anything other than something for Steve to stare at. He keeps his eyes on Steve's eyes, so he sees them change to squinting, crinkled, and darts his eyes down to see Steve's mouth curling into self-satisfied glee.

"You want to see?" he asks Bucky.

"Are you done with me here?"

"Dunno yet."

"Then not unless you really want me to. Looks right?"

"Yep. Not left."

"All right then. I trust you." The self-satisfied glee melts into something more delicate, and then he's being kissed, delicate too. Bucky feels fragile and small with how slow and careful Steve's lips are against him. Feels like an earring—a worn one, securely held inside someone else.

Then Steve mumbles, breath hot, "We oughta clean all that shit up."

"If we gotta." He waits for Steve to step back first, to let go of him, before turning to all the items assembled on the counter. Steve slots the Sharpie back into the magnetic pen holder on the icebox and Bucky places the pin carefully into the cookie tin, and pauses at the potato wedge, poking at it. A Hulk-sized finger pokes at his brain in response, jolting him.

He asks, "Did you feed me raw potato once? You know, before?”                                        

“I might have." Steve shuts the cookie tin's lid. Everything's secure and away. "Think I meant it as punishment but you liked it too much.”

“I did? You think I’d still like it?”                                                         

“We can find out. Ask for it again."                                                   

"I didn't ask a first—Ow! Sorry." Steve grips Bucky's bicep, thumb a hard pressure driving the sting from where he pinched him deep. "Please, Steve? May I try some raw potato?"

"What, you think you deserve a treat like that?"

"I—" No answer seems obvious, or simple, or true. His mouth's hanging wide enough open to catch the human-fly hybrid from _The Fly_ , his eyes fixed on an unidentifiable stain on the countertop, when Steve jumps in to save him.

Barely any panicked floundering's detectable in his delivery of, "I guess you didn't behave _too_ badly while I was decorating you. I need a moment."

"Wait," Bucky says, and Steve's drawer-rummaging pauses. "Already got a wedge right here."

"Yeah, we got a great wedge right here I might have _shoved some ear blood into_. I'm working fresh. Actually, go throw that out. Don't want you getting any ideas." He shoves Bucky in the direction of the trash can, and Bucky rolls his shoulders, presses a hand to the small of his back with a grunt, his muscles processing all at once how long he was bent over the counter. Elbow-deep in a cabinet, Steve looks at him, asking, and Bucky shakes his head and shrugs.

"I'm fine." If Steve doesn't believe him, he keeps his lips zipped about it.

Poised to toss the potato in the trash, foot pressing down the lever that pops the lid open, arm aloft with his hand daintily dangling from the wrist and the potato wedge daintily dangling from two fingers a three foot drop above the trash can's waiting mouth, Bucky says, "Hey, Steve. I've got an idea." Plenty's already rotting in there, smells like.

Steve's sigh is a deflating blimp. "What did I just say? Fine. Let's hear it. I need something to laugh at."

"Why don't we start composting? I think the neighborhood has compost pickup, even."

"Oh." Steve looks over his shoulder. A big lumpy potato's in his hand now, and he nudges the cabinet door closed with his forehead while his potato-free hand digs blindly in a drawer. "Yeah, we should. Look up the details later, all right?"

"Already printed 'em. I was underselling with 'I think.'" Goodbye, ear blood potato wedge. The lid closes slowly: lights out for all little tubers that have finished their missions.

"Wow, you not exaggerating? That's a change."

"Holy fucking moly. Oughta listened to my ma. She told me: kettles should never marry pots. Bad, hypocritical blood between those two."

"Yeah, you fucked up, Buck. You want peel or no peel?"

"I want whatever you want to give me."

"Good boy. On the counter. Up."

He's made to wait and watch as Steve chops off the potato's end, and slices that smaller, so he's got a wedge about the same as the one he just threw out. The way he holds the knife is how Bucky taught him, and Bucky feels a bloom of pride. It mixes with tense anticipation in his stomach when Steve runs the peeler over the wedge's remaining rough skin, teeth dragging slow until there's nothing but damp-looking yellow-white flesh.

"Open," Steve says, and uses harsh fingernails to pull Bucky's tongue further out so the tip droops over his lower lip. Then he places the potato wedge carefully, far enough back that it's securely in Bucky's mouth but not so far back on his tongue that he'll gag. This punishment's not about that. "Close," but he nudges Bucky's mouth shut for him instead of leaving room for disobedience. "Chew."

Someone oughta phone up France and tell them to stop calling potatoes _apples of the earth._ Should be apple _then_ the earth. First it tastes like a weak Macintosh or whatever's cheapest in the store, maybe going soft, yeah, but still edible. But _then_ it dissolves into dusty dirt, both in taste and texture. But Steve specifically didn't make him gag, so he doesn't let himself gag on this now, screwing up his face and forcing the grisly mush down. With his mouth free and empty, he shudders. “I don’t like it.”

“Too bad." There's sympathy in Steve's eyes that he knows better than to let into his voice. "Consider it punishment for whatever I was trying to punish you for seventy years ago.”

“Backpay.”

“Exactly.”

“Guess I deserve that.”

“Not really up to you, but thanks for the vote of confidence. In fact, I think I should give you some more backpay, huh? Who knows how bad you were being. Better err on the side of caution, right?”

"Oh yeah, that's what you always say. Even if I wasn't that bad, y'know, interest. I bet I've accumulated some."                             

"Does backpay come with interest?" Probably he should know that from personal experience, but Bucky can stress over Steve's lack of interest in his own finances another time.

"Steven, I'm not looking for realism here. Just make me sorry for my hypothetical misbehavior, all right?"

"So demanding, Buck. If you _insist_." He leaves Bucky sitting there, kicking his heels against the cabinet fronts, searching with his tongue for any potato mush stuck to the backs of his teeth so he can swallow that down and away too, and comes back holding the wooden spatula. He whaps it down on his own palm, corner of his mouth curled up. "Open." He sticks it between Bucky's teeth like a bit. The familiar wooden taste overpowers any lingering dirt-apple flavor. Bucky's about ready to cry from happiness. His mouth's gonna start crying any moment too.

The top of Steve's head looks so fluffy and beloved when Steve kneels down to untie Bucky's boots. Not even muttering about the annoyingly over-knotted laces. Just the precise movements, slight tugging of him working them undone. Careful, Bucky touches his palm to all that bright sticking-up hair, and when no complaint comes, he pets, saying thank you that way since he's gagged at the moment.

Steve looks up, moving his head slow enough not to interrupt the petting, and he smiles with his eyes locked on Bucky's eyes, with his fingers slipping beneath the criss-crossing now-unknotted laces to loosen them before tugging each boot off and setting them aside.

If it weren't for the petting, maybe he'd stand at this part, but he stretches his arms up to grab the waistbands of Bucky's pants and underwear where they've already been shucked down to mid-thigh, and Bucky finds his whole lower half stripped bare in a second, save for his socks. A chair catches the flung-aside bundle of clothes. Steve breaks eye contact to duck his head once more. He kisses the knob of Bucky's ankle through his sock, light, but that lightness feels more like a brand than any firmer kiss might.

 _So reverent, Mr. Altar Boy_ , Bucky wants to joke. Through the spoon handle, he says, "Suh wuh-weh-ig."

"Gross. Don't talk with your mouth full." He stands slowly, giving Bucky time to remove the hand from his hair instead of just throwing it off.

Bucky tries to smile at him around the handle but all he manages is opening his eyes real wide. Twin muscles twitch on each side of his jaw. Steve's actually smiling, and says, "C'mere," which is all the warning he gives for grabbing one of Bucky's calves in each hand and hauling his legs up high.

Bucky squeaks. His nails attempt to dig into the counter for purchase. The sweaty, bony backs of his knees are squeezed tight by Steve's hands skidding downward toward them. "Spit that out," Steve says, and Bucky lets it drop from his mouth, roll down his chest and come to a stop against the root of his dick. "Hi," Bucky says, breathy.

"What do you want?"

"Well. That thing—" He nods down to the spatula— "was really teaching me a lesson earlier."

"That so? What about, Buck? Algebra? French? HTML?"

Bucky giggles. "No. I could teach it all of those."

"Yeah, like anyone would ever listen to you. What lesson were you learning, huh? Hold these for me."

"What? Oh." In the moment between when Steve lets go of his knees and he takes hold of them himself, he almost falters and lets them drop, ab muscles fluttering. But he doesn't let Steve down like that. He keeps himself open, ready, a bird showing off its full wingspan.

"What lesson?" Rescuing the spatula from the V of Bucky's bent body, Steve takes it to the sink and runs it under water. Transforms it into a more effective tool of instruction.

"To be good?"

"Hmm. I think 'good' is a bit of a stretch for you." The spatula's gentle kiss to Bucky's cheek is cool, clammy. It drags a trail of wetness across his face, to his lips. He kisses back. With the slats, it's like kissing the bars of a cage, less like kissing a weapon than when it's the solid surface of a spoon or belt or hand. They didn't try having him kiss the whisk, but maybe later. It would bite his lips like Steve does.

"To behave?" he says through the slats.

"Better. Be more specific." Steve pulls the spatula away, only for it to come to rest on the exposed inside of Bucky's thigh.

"To not talk back to you when you're trying to do something?"

Steve heaves a sigh. "I _guess_. That's more correct. But were you really learning or was this thing just talking to a wall?" The hand not holding the spatula knocks on Bucky's forehead like it's a door. The sound's more hollow than that, watermelonish. Bucky's nose scrunches up with a wince.

"I was trying to learn. But you know how I am."

"Yeah, takes a lot of reinforcing, huh? Well, don't worry honey. I'm here to help it stick." On the last word, he swings the spatula and it lands against Bucky's thigh with a loud wet _smack_ and a wide, burning sting, and Bucky inhales sharp and fast. "You drop those legs you're in for a galaxy of pain instead of just a world of it. Got it?"

Another smack, now to his ass, and Bucky's hips jerk. His dick and his face both twitch with the next hit right over that one, urging the pain up a level. "Got it. I won't."

"Yeah, we'll see," and then it's a flurry. A blizzard, but flaming, freeze helling over instead of the opposite. The wood acquaints itself with every reachable inch of him.

When it hits the drawn-tight skin where his ass and thigh meet five times in a row, that turns the valve and the tears start coming like a hose trying to put the fire out, but they're too far from where he's hot and red, and he'd never want to put it out anyway. All that happens is his face gets hot and red too and Steve looks so _encouraged_ by the sight of him breaking open, trying to bite his own chin off, and he treats the opposite leg the same, focusing in on where he's sensitive and taut and a muffled shriek slips from out between Bucky's teeth. His dick is drooling. He wishes he were drooling.

So he says, " _Please_ ," a choked noise, and Steve says, "Please hit you more? Well, sure, Buck," and puts a hand under his ass—Bucky gasps with pleasure at callouses rubbing where he's been worked into an exposed nerve—and scoots him forward more, his head _thunking_ harmlessly against the cabinets. More of his ass becomes available to the spatula's bite. Hits begin to land on that untouched territory, turning it bright and painful as the rest of him.

"Yes, but no, I mean, _yes, yes, more_!" His voice spirals up with panic when Steve responds to the _no_ by stopping, raising an eyebrow and grinning at him. "It's just not what I _meant,_ please don't stop, Steve."

"Tell me what you meant and maybe I'll keep going. Don't fuck this up."

"Please put something in my mouth? I need, want, whatever."

"Aw. Of course, Buck. Any time." Three fingers slide into his mouth, tasting of salt and wood and rubbing alcohol. He sucks gratefully, tongue writhing, teeth a gentle massage scraping back and forth over the knuckles. If only he could suck them all the way in. Down his throat. Choke on them properly. Clearly understanding what that furious sucking means, Steve shoves his fingers in further, encouraging him to gag.

His throat works furiously and his chest heaves foreward. More tears spring from him, which he didn't know was possible anymore. How there's enough water in him for those _and_ the excess of spit born around Steve's intrusive fingers, _and_ what's leaking from his dick, he'll never know.

Steve is merciful and draws his fingers back to safe territory. Bucky's throat calms. Steve looks drunk on him again. Greedy to be drunker.

"Ugly little bitch, Christ," and Bucky smiles dopily at him around the fingers. The motion presses them harder into his tongue and he almost gags again, a stinging at the corner of his eyes. Steve pulls a grossed-out face. "Put that thing away," and Bucky tucks the smile away for later. "At least now I did your ears there's _something_ about you nice to look at. Not a single other pretty thing about you."

His eyes scan Bucky's face like they're going to 3D print a copy. Measuring and learning every inch, and his voice drops to murmuring. He kisses the wet corner of one of Bucky's eyes and Bucky fights the impulse to squeeze them shut tight. It's hard when Steve starts talking, mouth still right there, and Bucky settles for rapid blinking. Eyelashes making out with Steve's mouth while it says dumb stuff like, "Except when you cry. Look so good when you cry, Buck. When it's just for me. When I know I made you that way. Pretty little disgusting crybaby."

Dumb stuff that makes Bucky's groin pulse with impatient blood, his chest heave, his heart go mushy as potato grit, raw and dirty. It's the best type of punishment, this pummeled-to-pulp heart. Steve pulls his mouth away from Bucky's eye. He pulls his fingers free. Wipes the spit off on Bucky's cheek.

Bucky says, "Nngh," and moans. The fingers that were gagging him dig into his sensitive thigh instead, pressing his criss-crossed nerves like piano keys to make a chord of enormous, uncategorizable _sensation_. Loud and all-consuming.

"I think—I'm gonna get you red and hot, and dark and blotchy and dig out the scratchiest wool sweater I can find and make you sit on it."

"On—a hard wood chair?"

"Obviously on a hard wood chair. What the fuck do you take me for?"

"All you got. Take you for all you—Fuck, Steve, I'm gonna—" He's dripping. He's making a mess. His hips feel like they're gonna float up to the ceiling.

"I'm not even touching you there."

"Well then maybe it's _psychosomatic_ , I don't know."

"God. Got you so well trained-up, huh? Got you so hot just for being put in your place. Surprised you don't come in your pants every time I smack you on the ass on your way by."

"Who—who says I don't?"

"Come on, I know you'd tell me. I trust you to be good and tell me how I make you feel. Right?"

"I tell you. I always tell you. I try."

In a couple seconds of silence, something in the air shifts, and Steve's voice becomes even more like a scraped knee full of asphalt, gritty and tender, to tell him, "Me too, Buck. I try too. I promise," and Bucky's hand cups Steve's cheek, something steel-solid to steady him if he needs it, but Steve stays steady without assistance, and turns his head to kiss the palm, sloppy enough that the sensors pick up _warm, wet_. It's been so many years since he started learning to associate that message of _warm, wet_ with things other than blood. He thinks he's finally earned his Master's degree in how many peaceful things can be warm and wet to the touch.

"Thank you," he whispers, because he knows it hasn't ever come natural to Steve, sensing and decoding his own feelings, and that part's somewhat crucial, you wanna go around articulating them to someone else.

Steve nods, licking his lips in a quick flick, dragging his tongue back in through clenched front teeth. Intermission over. "Put your hand back down to brace yourself." Bucky obeys. He licks his lips too when the spatula rubs in a circle against his ass cheek, warning him. "I'll give you something to thank me for."

The first few smacks alone are enough to deserve an entire aisle of Thank You cards at Duane Reade, the pain having been intensified by the pause. And it keeps _going_ , upping the number of cards Bucky owes, laying bruises, splotches, dark heat into him, filling him up with it where he didn't even know he'd been hollow, where he thought he'd had bones and muscles and fat but there's still all this room in his body for a sweet overpowering pain.

Everything out of his mouth is at least seventy-five percent whimper. His grip on his breathing's perched precariously atop a slippery slope.

Then nothing but hits veering close to his hole, more flicks then the same hard bruising smacks, spatula tip bouncing with a sting over the still-pale flesh toward the inside of his ass cheeks and he squeezes his eyes closed and now it's ninety-percent whimper, ten-percent grunt. That might be all the language left in his brain and the rest has been chased out forever by the threat of the pain moving even closer, where he's more sensitive, more needy, always open for whatever Steve wants to do to him.

It's becoming hard to keep himself fully open for what Steve wants to do to him, knees and hands both sweaty, his abs and the muscles in his lower back periodically shaking, and there's one last hit to that area, the very tip of the spatula hitting his hole, and his dick jerks _hard_ ; he's so close to exploding, _all_ of him exploding, and then the attention shifts. Back to the insides of his legs.

His muscles don't _actually_ relax, but now they're able to fantasize about relaxing, and he's grabbed back from that edge, and sighs with relief, half-closing his eyes. His vision's blurry with tears anyway. All of him's blurry with burning rectangle layered over burning rectangle layered over the way Steve's breathing's gone ragged too. He surrenders himself to being just one big red blur forever.

The onslaught stops.

Bucky's whole body's ringing the way his ears would right after a bomb goes off.

A spot on his inner thigh nearing the knee took the last stinging smack, and the spatula slides slowly down, along that long line of spanked-red skin, toward where he's fleshier and more sensitive, where Steve's focused more attention so he'd yowl if he had to press his legs closed right now. Smacks closer to his knees are more sparing, but it's always open season closer to his groin. As for his groin itself—

"Do you want this?" Steve says evenly. The spatula's slid right into home base, under Bucky's balls. Bucky tries to say—Well, something, unknown; some poor excuse for an articulation of his upside-down rollercoaster want. Doesn't matter because all he manages is a breathy moan sutured to a grunt. "I think I might want it," Steve adds, lifting Bucky's balls a bit with the spatula like he's sliding fried eggs out of a pan. "Thoughts?" He sounds just how he does when he spots a painting he thinks could look good on the living room wall.

In that scenario, Bucky's usually got something more helpful to contribute than, " _Steve._ "

"You're gonna answer me, Buck. You want me to hurt your balls or no? I'm taking a fucking survey and I need your participation. Be a good little fucktoy and do your civic duty."

"You've said—You said you wouldn't."

"Who said I didn't lie?"

"You? Steve from Paramus? _Never_."

"Sure. Honest as apple pie and hot dogs. That's me. Now yes or no? I won't ask again."

"Y-yes? Yes. Please."

"You don't sound so sure, Buck. I mean—" One finger draws loop-de-loops along Bucky's ass. Ghostly touch enough to make him moan and his leg muscles all tense, he's so worked over— "not that your answer's gonna make my decision for me. But I would like to know where you stand. For science."

" _Yes_ , Steve, I mean it. My vote's yes, for science, yeah, all right? I wanna try."

"Mm. Nah." He lifts and lowers Bucky's balls once more, and then the spatula's sliding away. Steve tucks it safely under his arm. "I think just the one big first for today, huh?"

"What? What first?"

"Right, forgot I pierced your ears last March. Really, we're old hat at—"

"Right, okay, okay, I—Yeah. Just the one."

"Disappointed?"

Bucky shakes his head, and really, it's fine. There are so many things to want in his life, and he gets most of them. Made peace years ago with the squeamish look on Steve's face in response to the mere suggestion and, "How many times have you been kicked in the nuts, Buck? 'Cause I've—Ugh. Sorry, but I'm—No."

Steve says, gentle laughter in his voice, "It was mean of me to tease you like, huh, baby? Mean of me to promise you stuff I won't do?" Hot gusts of breath in Bucky's face.

"Well. You didn't promise."

"I implied. But I've got a different promise. How's this thing feeling?" His fist wraps around Bucky's dick, sudden and tight, and Bucky can't help but keen. "It really seemed to like the spatula."

"I—A lot. A lot, please."

"Please what?" Steve's hand releases him.

"Please touch me more, please, Steve. There. I want—"

"What?"

"May I come, please?" His blood's felt like molten led for eons. Living in a body like that isn't sustainable.

"Well." Steve huffs thoughtfully. "I guess. Here, let your legs down, good boy." The cool countertop against his hot ass and thighs makes him gasp and lick his own chin. "Now you're gonna dig your fingers into all that nice red skin I gave you. Press on it, pinch, whatever you want, Buck. And I'm gonna blow you. And you'll come whenever you want. Right?"

"Yes, thank you." He gets right to work, kneading at his inner thighs, forcing his mouth open with pants and a constant whining as every second a new burst of _good_ ricochets all up and down his spine.

Diligent as always, Steve gets right to work too. It takes no time at all. Unsurprising. Neglected so long only to be sucked deep into the hollow-cheeked heat of Steve's mouth in one smooth motion, his dick had no time to fortify its defenses.

Grabbing and twisting the flesh of his burning thighs so the pain amplifies, echoing through the cave of him; a hand fondling his once-threatened balls; a tongue writhing pointedly against the underside of his dick; all of him encased in tight and wet, and Steve's throat contracts around him; Steve's hand covers his to take over the kneading, and oops, there he goes: a confetti canon.

At the last second, Steve pulls back and gets Bucky's come all over his face, stray dribbles on his neck and shirt and in his hair. Bucky closes his eyes, panting. He feels hollowed out. Doubtful that he'll be able to clean the come off Steve without some assistance, Steve pulling his tongue out of his mouth for him and directing his head all around. That should be nice.

But when he cracks an eye open, Steve looks pleased with himself and not especially motivated to clean up. He touches a bit of come on his collarbone and licks it off his fingers without looking. "Now we match."

"What?"

"Both marked, idiot." A careful bite to the top of his ear makes the message clear.

"Oh. Cool." No reason not to let his eyes droop back shut.

Steve's giggle is near-hysterical. Next thing Bucky knows, a glass touches his lips, and Steve says, "Drink," and he lets himself be hydrated at practically gunpoint. The gun's made of love and care and something else sappy like that, and more importantly, the unfair manipulability that accompanies post-orgasm heaviness. "Good enough," Steve says when Bucky's swallowed the whole glass, and he fills it again, this time for himself to glug down.

His lips look wet when he touches his forehead to Bucky's. So Bucky leans in and licks, chasing more hydration without gunpoint this time. His thirst becomes a kiss, Steve licking into his mouth, biting his tongue, _laughing_ into his mouth, and Bucky accidentally traps his tongue when he can't help grinning, teeth clamping down. A yelp from Steve. They pull apart.

"Hey," Steve says, and his eyes are wild, boring into Bucky's and then darting from pierced ear to pierced ear. Bucky lifts his chin and one shoulder, preens. "More water, glamour puss?"

"Please and thank you."

"So polite now that I've beat the shit out of you, huh? You want a hard wooden chair?"

 "Course. Scratchy sweater?"

"Buck, we don't _own_ any scratchy sweaters."

"Whaddaya mean we don't? You've got awful sweater taste."

"Any time I've worn a sweater that made me the _slightest_ bit uncomfortable to cuddle with you've bitched about it." In his indignance, he's not looking at the sink. The glass fills up and over, water all down his hand, sleeking down his forearm. "Shit. Hey, want three glasses?"

"Sure, what—That doesn't mean you had to _throw them out_."

"I didn't throw them out! I donated them!"

"What like to a Goodwill? You coulda auctioned them off—"

"Hey, I could just fill a bucket with water, huh? Stick your head—

"—as Captain America and donated that money to the Goodwill."

"Stop criticizing my attempt to prioritize your comfort. I'm not even Captain America any—"

"Oh, right, so _no one_ would want them then."

" _Fine_. I could have done that, but it's too late, so leave me alone about it." The bucket's an empty threat, but he does bang around getting two more glasses.

"Hmm. Guess it's better the American people don't know you've got such shitty sweater taste."

"You want the wooden chair sans sweater or no?"

"You're so mean to me. Fine."

"Yeah, you're welcome."

"Thanks, pal."

"Dumbass." He places the three water glasses so careful on the table and pulls out a chair. Grabs Bucky by the bicep and marches him over, shoving him onto one. Bucky hisses as the dulling pain in his ass and thighs flares back to life, into burning, at the unyielding touch. But Steve has excellent timing sometimes, and swallows his hiss in a fast, bruising kiss that he follows with holding another glass of water to his lips. "Take it out my hand. Drink. You try to move off that chair until I say you can and I duct tape you to it."

"Mmm." He gasps and wipes water off his mouth with his wrist. "Could do that anyway if you wanted."

"Maybe next time. Stay still on your own for me."

"I'd love to."                                                                                         

"Yeah, I know. You wanna see the damage?" Scraping up the floor like a madman, Steve plonks himself into other chair and _then_ drags it over to Bucky's, close enough that their knees touch. Like sitting at the flimsy card table in their first place together.

"My ass? That position kinda gave me a front row seat, and thank you _very_ much for that."

"My pleasure. I mean the earrings."

"Oh. Yes please."

Steve takes a long, fortifying sip from one of the glasses, apparently planning to go do a triathalon in a second, and worms his phone out of his pocket. He holds it in front of Bucky's face with the selfie camera on. When Bucky reaches to grab it, he clicks his tongue, and Bucky puts his hands back in his lap. "Mirror, mirror on the wall," he murmurs, expecting Steve to take the bait, but Steve takes the bait in the wrong way and answers, "You."

Bucky's face is already red from crying and coming but he watches it flush redder. In his peripheral, Steve grins, overly pleased with himself.

It's not as though he looks any different than he imagined he would, really. There's his usual face with its usual parts. Here and there, strands of hair, curled with sweat, have fallen from the bundle on top of his head.

And there are shields in his ears. One only visible after he tucks a fallen strand of hair away.                                                       

Red and white and blue and intricately painted and absurd for being wooden, and _there_. They're there inside him, on either side of him, bracketing all those usual face parts. Containing them. God help him, they _bring out the blue in his eyes_ , though not as much as they bring out the red in his tear-sticky face.

He bites his lip and takes Steve's free hand, drawing it to the left ear, which he's got turned close to the camera. His eyes strain to remain on the screen. "Gotta check," he says.

"Check what, Buck?"

"When you press my ear against my skull. If it stabs me right. I—It looks—" He has to hope the way he swallows expresses himself clearer than any word could. "But the final test, you know. Can you hurt me?"

A soft laugh, and Steve says, "Always can. You know that."

"Still."

"Still. This is serious. I understand."

On screen, Steve's dumb graceful meat slab hand slides in to obscure Bucky's ear. Sound goes fuzzier. The hand's heel barely has to move to—

"Oh," Bucky gasps.

"Good?"

It's a pulsing pain, the kind of loud, insistent throb something so tiny shouldn't be able to produce, and yet. With the slightest motion from Steve, that bit of metal becomes the tip of a radio tower, and red hot signals radiate from it, through Bucky's skull and down through him. His eyes squeeze tight like that'll defend against it; his fist twists in the front of his shirt, tight enough it's a miracle he doesn't rip the fabric. "Yeah. Yeah, golly." He feels like he has no breathing, no heartbeat. This pain is the magic that keeps him going instead. "Could really be a professional piercer, you wanted. Jesus, I'll come again you don't—"

"Don't."

"Won't, I promise. Thank you." When he opens his eyes, Steve's tucked the phone into his pocket, and whether he took a photo first—Well, that's none of Bucky's business until Steve decides it is.

"Eh. Not interested in piercing anyone but the hunk of junk I live with. Maybe this next." Sneaky-quick, Steve's hand leaves Bucky's ear and the fingers shove between Bucky's lips, digging their nails into his tongue. The soft join between his skull and neck continues throbbing unassisted, complemented by this new hurt. "Thoughts?"

Bucky nods, greedily tugging more high-pitched pain out of the grip Steve's nails have on him. Steve could attach the I TOLERATE DWIGHT EISENHOWER DOGHOUSES magnet _to the metal in his tongue._ Make him stick it out and display it while they hang out at home. Every single questionable practicality involved there be damned right now.

Steve says, "Hmm," and frees Bucky's tongue. Opts for wrapping both arms around Bucky's whole head, hugging him to his chest so a shield-pierced ear is situated over his thudding heart, looking after it. "We'll see. Right now I think I like you as is."

Bucky's very grateful his small smile at that's hidden. Less grateful that his wrinkled nose is invisible too when he asks, "Um. You ever gonna wash my come off your face or do you like that as is too?"

Steve's laugh is beautiful. "Don't rush me. I'm old and slow."

"All right, all right. Your own pace, Oscar the fucking Grouch."

"Hush, you. I'm hygienic as a hospital."

"Hospitals got bodily fluids pouring out their ears, Steve. But sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night."

Once again, Steve responds, "You." Bucky's getting a fucking divorce.

                             

 

 

 

-

 

 

                                             

The dart lands with a satisfying _thwack_ dead-center of the cowl's goofy left wing, exactly the spot Bucky had directed him to aim for, when Steve cuts Bucky's praise off half a syllable in by asking, “What _am_ I gonna do now?”

Bucky turns his gaze from the ripped-out _Guiness World Record_ pages on the wall, now porcupine-ishly jam-packed with darts, for the first time in thirty-seven minutes. Even straining his neck and his eyes as he looks back over his shoulder, he can't get a very good picture of what kind of expression's on Steve's face, not with how close he's being held to Steve's body, but from the weary tone and the tight jaw, he can piece the rest together.  “Steve, you can do whatever you want.”

“Yeah, Sam said that too.”

“Well. I guess Sam’s right once in a while.” He yelps at the vicious pinch Steve gives to his cheek.

“You could actually come with me sometime. When I go out with him. You don’t _have_ to stay committed to the joke. Yeah, yeah,” he intercepts. "Not a joke. Your real feelings."

“I know that. I just. It’s good, right? For you to have a friend that’s just yours and not mine?” The lack of answer says it all. “I know, I know. I don’t have one of those.”

“It’s a legitimate concern.”

“I’m working on it.” Once again, the lack of answer— “Okay I _was_ working on it. I don’t know.”

“A book club?” This time when Bucky tries to see his face, Steve says, "Hey, don't hurt your neck," and manhandles him so he's sitting perpendicular across Steve's thighs instead of pressed up tight to him chest-to-back. One of his legs has to be thrown over the chair's arm for the position to work quite right. Psychically squirmy now that the focus has turned to his own lack of a life, he considers taking advantage of how wide his legs are spread to change the topic. But Steve's arm remains a comforting weight around his middle and when Steve repeats, "Book club?" he sighs and decides to accept the offered help.

“Mm. Maybe. Might be too much like work.”

“Are there. Television clubs?”

“TV’s private,” comes out in a rush.

“Okay, okay. Movie club?”

“Maybe. Fuck.”

“You know, if you want—If you want, I can do research for you. Make a list of options. If doing it yourself is. Overwhelming?”

“I don’t _want_ it to be overwhelming.” The whine in his voice makes him wince.

“I know. But sometimes them’s the breaks, pal.”

Bucky groans loudly. Covers his face with both hands, and Steve’s patient. Strokes his hair and sometimes tugs. Until Bucky uncovers his face and takes a deep breath and says, “Yeah, them's the apples. Can we trade off?”

“How so?”

“You get ideas for how I can make friends. I get ideas for what you do now. Burden off both our shoulders. We can have fun with it, even. Include some dumb ideas with the real. How’s that?”

With so many things, Steve yesses immediately, when the question’s not even all the way asked. But he’s patient right now, strokes and pulls Bucky’s hair more, turning it over in his head before saying. “All right. Let’s trade. We competing?”

“Sure, honey.” Bucky grins. “Race to give each other the most options in the world.” He holds up a pinky, and Steve curls his own pinky around it, and they both nod solemnly.

“Shake on it too?” Steve asks.

“Oh, yes, please.” The hand gentle in his hair digs in and yanks, shaking him rapidly side-to-side, and Bucky giggles and shrieks. Then he says, "I'm gonna start a Twitter. Just for this. Each tweet's a thing you oughta do."

"All right. I'm gonna write a real list. The way you should write lists, on a yellow legal pad. In black ballpoint."

"And here I thought you were joining me in the twenty-fifth century, Mr. HDMI."

"Wanna know a secret?"

"How serious?"

"Deadly. No. Hmm. Medium."

"I'm all ears," Bucky emphasizes with light tugs to his pierced lobes. "Whaddya wanna confess?"

"I'm sorry if it ruins the romance, Buck, but—" The way he lingers there, how his fingertips skim Bucky's lips, betrays that he's not fully joking, really does think something might be ruined, so Bucky breaks that tension by kissing his fingers and then nipping at them with a tiny growl. Steve snorts from back in his throat. "All right, all right. I didn't learn how to use PowerPoint and the HDMI just for you. I did all that as practice for something else."

"Hmm. Yep, you're right." Bucky makes to hoist himself up off Steve's lap at the same time as pulling Steve's arm tighter around his waist. Steve gets the picture and makes his arm an iron seatbelt Bucky can play-struggle against while grunting out, "Romance ruined. Nice knowin' you an' all, but—"

Grunting gives way to giggling as another arm covers his chest. Trapped and breathless, he squeaks with pleasure.

"Get back here, you."

"Help! Someone, help!" Bucky cries out. "I'm being held captive by a horrible, handsome ogre!"

"You sure are." Steve's hand claps down over his mouth and holds him tighter than gagging, tight enough Bucky can't even mold his lips into a kiss to the palm. So he gives in and slumps. His head finds a home on Steve's shoulder. _Mercy_ , he taps on Steve's thigh, and the hand slides down off his face.

"Wait," he says. "I wanted to kiss that."

"Oh! Good. Say please."

"Please, sweetheart. Let me kiss your hand?" Stretching out the kiss, he mutters maybe-sensually into Steve's hand, "Please sweetheart, tell me what else you needed PowerPoint and the HDMI for? Updating your resume?"

"Sort of?" He ends the kiss by popping his palm against Bucky's lips before pulling away. "It was—I'm going to do a self-defense workshop, at the center."

"You what?"

"Yeah, a few. A series. So I needed—" His hand circles in the air like it used to have four wheels but one fell off and rolled into a ditch— "visual aids."

"Steven, that's—Gimme my phone."

"Say please, dipshit." He hands it over from where Bucky abandoned it on the rug next to the armchair when they sat down to play.

Bucky kisses him on the cheek before whispering, "Please," and Steve swats in his direction but makes the lightest contact imaginable. "That's amazing, Steve, and it's my first tweet."

"What, 'Gimme my phone, please?'"

"You fucking ninny. Teaching people to protect themselves? That's a thing. That's a thing people do with their lives, and I'm tweeting it, and you're following my Twitter right now. Gimme your phone." Steve's eyebrow's only just begun to rise when he adds, "Please, please, oh all powerful king to whom I swear everlasting—"

"Shush. The fucking nonsense you make me hear."

Regardless, he hands his phone over too and Bucky thumprints it open. It's a whole process, which he should have anticipated. Downloading the app and then making Steve create a Twitter using the anonymous secure email Bucky badgered him into registering, which requires going through a whole, "I forgot my password to the anonymous secure email. Yeah, Buck, I know what 'secure' means, but it's been years," hassle, and muttering numbers under his breath, et cetera.

Their stomachs are both growling for dinner by the time Steve's following Career Counseling for Sexy Centenarians (@goodideahaverxoxo).

Clicking the heart has to be Steve's responsibility. Bucky hands the phone, open to @goodideahaverxoxo's sole tweet, back to a shockingly patient Steve, who's been doing sudoku on Bucky's phone and humming out-of-key nothings. "Press the heart."

Predictable to death, Steve puts a hand over Bucky's heart and presses. It feels like the pressure should cut off his breathing as effectively as if that hot calloused palm slid a few inches up, but his breath stays deep and steady. Each inhale slams down his throat like an ocean wave; there's an almost-sting in his chest the same as salt water invading nasal passages, and gulls should be soaring above them, garnishing the white noise with their calls.

Correcting Steve seems wrong for this moment. But Steve's clearly not inclined to stop pressing Bucky's human heart—liking him—and looking fondly at his face, which Bucky knows is dumb and open, flooded with love, same as the face gazing at him, so he settles for rolling his eyes as politely as he knows how. That gets a laugh out of Steve, and a, "Yeah, I know." His thumb taps his phone screen. "I liked it. And I would never lie about something like that. Burgers?"

"I always want burgers."

"You know I know you don't, but good. You're on frozen fry duty while I make 'em. Up, up."

 

 

 

-

 

 

Rattling wakes him. The tin can’s knocking around on the ground, string slack and waiting for him to pick it up and pull it taut as his own heartstrings, which also vibrate to the tune of Steve’s voice when it answer’s Bucky’s sleepy, “Hello?” with, “Important message for Herbert Hoover Cowsheds.”

Using an app to check him for a concussion wouldn’t at all be the same as him using his phone to check his own heart rate. This, however? A little the same as the heart rate app. Heart and phone all tangled together.

He says, “Sure, it’s me, Herbie the Cow. What’s up?” The can’s lip clicks against the thin loop of gold circling his earlobe when he quickly shifts from talk mode to hear mode.

“I made pancakes, Cowhooves. We’ve got blueberry and chocolate chip. Come set the table.”

It's day number one of Steve's self-defense lessons, and it's hard to say for sure if he got any sleep or was up all night perfecting PowerPoint slides and mumbling through a speech like he wouldn't discard at least eighty-five percent of any prepared words a couple minutes in. But what matters is tin cans and nicknames and pancakes, the bright light in all those things speaking to a buoyed Steve who maybe, maybe had at least one good dream last night.

Before going to chow down, Bucky looks at himself in the mirror above his desk. The gold in his ears doesn't glint. They're dull, earrings for being paranoid, for not giving away his position if he was hiding, because Steve is the most thoughtful, because Steve gets him.

Another pair does glint gold in the earring holder he bought for himself online, a big embroidery hoop filled with lacy white fabric like milk in a glass. That was the first result when he went looking for earring holders, and stupid as this is, it struck him as fate, a fucking embroidery hoop full of milk.

There aren't many earrings punched into the lace yet. No big dangly _Slut_ s or dainty flowers, though he saw studs shaped like both Mickey and Minnie Mouse heads in the space in the linen closet that Steve thought was good for hiding gifts but isn't.

But right in the center: the spade-shaped shields. _Starter earrings._ A point of origin.

Two plates on the counter teeter with towers of pancakes, and Steve’s nudging them into orderliness with a spatula. In the middle of the table, the yellow flowers Bucky bought him yesterday because he looked at them and thought, _Aw, Steve_ , are too tall for the glass pickle jar Steve stuck them in, so they give off the impression of drawing themselves up to their full height, self-important, to yell at the rest of the room.

Bucky thinks, _Aw, Steve._ He says, “The flowers look good. Pancakes too.”

Steve gestures inarticulately with the spatula. “Thanks. I’m an artist.”

Bucky laughs and comes close to kiss Steve on the cheek and to turn off the blue flame Steve’s forgotten about on the stove. Steve kisses his cheek too, and then nudges him back, getting a good look at Bucky. Sets the spatula down on the counter.

He says, “You’re lopsided.”

“Yeah.” Bucky frowns at his own shiny shoulder and shrugs it, lopsided. “So’s your face. Longer than I’ve been.”

Steve’s snort’s more goose-like than pig-like. “No, dummy. These.”

The nail on his pinky finger’s just small enough to pass through the sliver of air between the bottom of the gold loop and Bucky’s flesh—Right hand, where his nails are growing out; on the left hand, every nail’s bitten to the quick. And that ragged-nothing left thumbnail draws an arc over Bucky’s skin, tracing the top of the little shield in his other ear. Then a shift, the pad of Steve’s thumb dragging down the side of Bucky’s face, tracing the harsher curve of his jaw instead, before coming to rest against his lips.

The sturdy bone at the base of his thumb presses to Bucky’s chin, and the tip of his thumb grazes the cartilage between Bucky’s nostrils, and he’s not holding his mouth closed really, but silencing him. Skin smelling raw and doughy and feeling that way too, like Steve knife-peeled back the rabbit fur covering his hand a moment ago and this was the fragile, firm alive thing underneath.

Bucky kisses the joint halfway up the thumb, since it’s perfectly positioned and all. Steve’s smile takes its time growing. He says, “Like a cartoon basset hound with one ear up and one down. You’re mismatched.”

“You noticed?” His voice is mostly clear behind Steve’s thumb, but lispy.

“Why?”

“Oh, you know.” His non-gag moves away. Steve holds his chin in one hand instead, so when he talks, he’s very aware of having a lower mandible. Feels like a ventriloquist dummy. “Take off one accessory before you leave the house.”

“Oh, shut up. You can say that and I can't?” His mouth shrinks back on itself, extra small, which is secretly the highest level of smile Steve has, and his pursed lips kiss Bucky’s eyebrow.

Bucky says, “Make me.”

“Don’t feel like it. Maybe later.”

The hand around his jaw gives him a rough shake, and Bucky’s smile is big and goofy to balance out Steve’s puckered-up face. “You _know_ why, okay? You know damn well. Now where’s my pancakes?”

“Getting cold. That’s where. Set the damn table.” He releases Bucky’s jaw and earlobe both, turning him and pushing him in the direction of the drawers and cabinets. Bucky’s obedient.

“Well that’s a bad place for them.” Forks and knives in the left hand. “They belong in my mouth.” Plates in the right. Metal with metal and pale skin with pale ceramic; he's an orderly filing cabinet.

“You’re so fucking spoiled.” Steve shakes up both kinds of orange juice and sticks them in the middle of the table as Bucky sets things up for them to eat side-by-side. The chairs are already dragged together.

“What are you gonna do about it?”

“Well. Consistency is key in being a good pet owner.”

“That right?”

“Read that somewhere. So with that in mind—”

Just as Bucky’s hip-checking the napkin drawer closed, Steve grabs his wrist and pulls him close and stuffs a folded up pancake in Bucky’s mouth. So big it hangs halfway out, probably looking like a woodpecker’s beak. And excessively soaked in syrup.

Bucky’s eyes widen in surprise and he drops the napkins. Steve says, “I’ll wash those later.” Then he leans in and takes a big bite of the protruding pancake. And chews with his mouth open, grinning wide as he can.

Which is revolting, obviously. But really okay, obviously, even if it’s _disrespectful_ to Bucky's table-setting efforts. Because Steve looks so blindingly happy, and because when Bucky starts working his jaw around his own half of the Breakfast Intrusion, he discovers it’s chocolate chips and blueberry _all in one_.

He’s really spoiled, and Steve leans in for another bite huge enough it’s a wonder he doesn’t gag, their lips brushing together in a good morning kiss before Steve backs off and says through the insane mouthful what’s probably supposed to be, “Get the juice glasses.”

Bucky goes to get the juice glasses with the pancake sweet and sticky and shutting him up. Steve picks up the dropped napkins and sets them aside for later.

**Author's Note:**

> Bucky experiences a sort of panic attack/dissociative episode after waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the night to find that Steve is no longer in bed with him after they fell asleep together. He finds Steve reading in the living room and explains to him that he feels like he doesn't have "alive insides," or feels like his blood is congealed, or like he might really be a wax sculpture of himself. Steve primarily responds to this by covering Bucky's heart and one of his pulse points with his hands and telling him that it feels like he's definitely got non-congealed blood. After a prolonged period of Steve covering various pulses for him and silently counting his heartbeats while they lie on the floor, Bucky begins to feel calmer and more rooted in reality.
> 
> Also in the same scene: some discussion of Bucky having fantasized about what his grave would be like when he was being tortured by Zola pre-Steve rescuing him in CA:TFA.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ike Doghouses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16190192) by [MsPooslie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsPooslie/pseuds/MsPooslie)
  * [Gift](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16438886) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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